Furry Foxes, Cussing Customers, and Annoying Applebees

Lisa and I just returned from a rare dinner out. The experience itself sucked, as the staff at the local Applebee's was more concerned with singing along to Bohemian Rhapsody than taking orders or delivering drinks. Really though, who cares? A dinner sans kids is a great dinner no matter the surroundings.

* * * *

On the way to dinner we saw a pair of foxes in our neighborhood. To those of you in the country this may not be a rare occurence, but this is a city of 600,000 people. I've never seen a fox before outside of cartoons. I took some camera-phone pics, but I doubt they'll turn out given the lighting conditions. The pair wasextremely bold, just lounging on a front lawn and watching traffic, then darting into the street and strolling past our van.

Back at job prior we had woodland behind the building, and at night I'd sometimes run into coyotes. But foxes, that's new to me. But apparently not new to Smiley, who was adament that he saw one cross our street last month. " 'ox, 'ox" he's say over and over, nodding his head vigourously.

I guess the little guy was right.

That brings the wildlife total here to:

1. assorted birds, including morning doves and robins.
2. foxes
3. racoons
4. skunks
5. field mice
6. and, once, a deer

* * * *

Speaking of Job Prior, today's workday featured a flashback experience, one that was all too common back in the day. Any readers from that workplace will nod their head in agreement.

I was at work finishing a sale when a young guy came in, cut ahead of two other people and interrupted me. No ifs or buts about this, it was plain as day. He physically moved ahead of people to get my attention. Does that behavior normally work? Do salespeople or waiters just drop their current customer and bow to him? Has someone encouraged this behavior in the past?

I told him he'd have to wait his turn , the same as I'd say to anyone else (and in fact, did say to someone later in the day). It was like flipping a light switch. Boom, he began swearing at me, finishing with "you're a racist motherfu**er".

[I think technically I should insert a comma there, as I think his intent was to call me a racist and a motherfu*ker, rather than just a common everyday racist motherfu*ker. ]

Now as usual I don't detail what I do for a living, as it's become my quirky signature not to shit where I eat. But rest assured, in my employer's sedate oasis of liberal thought such behavior is neither common nor warranted. Frankly, I find it hard to imagine anyone even getting worked up enough to say "ouch" if they stub their toe there, much less go off swearing.

Well, customers went off for "help", management came out, etc. but by then I had already finished the encounter. He left unhappy, and I continued work a little pissy. But the powers that be were very concerned about the conflict escalating. "Keep your cool Dan, " I was told. "If there are any more problems we'll call the police. Don't think it was your fault, that man was so out of line, blah blah."

I was pissed off, but their concern was almost as irritating. I consider myself extremely blessed to have gone seven months without someone swearing/screaming/threatening me at work, and am very happy to be out of a profession where those encounters were (surprisingly) standard issue. But I spent six years dealing with much worse crap on 3rd shift, and another three years handling a diminished amount of it during the day. I'm not going to cry, and I'm not going to go crazy and start swinging.

Anyway, this wasn't a big deal, and in truth took up all of four minutes out of an eight hour shift. I'm not sure why it's even stuck in my head long enough to write about it, except that I think I now have a deeper appreciation for a polite workplace. Roughly 65% of any asshole behavior I display on a given day is due to Job Prior. While I'm poor and getting poorer, I guess there are legitimate pluses in having that job yanked out from underneath me.

When God closes a door, yada yada.