Saturday, August 21, 2010

Counter-asshattery

A few days ago, Salon printed this story where a guy feels so emasculated by having lost his job that he feels the need to engage in a truly pathetic ritual of irritating the people near him in the grocery line. This is one of those pieces that makes me look stupid because I can't tell if it's serious or satire.

In any case, ever since I read it, I've felt the need to be outright solicitous to the people around me in grocery lines. I get the bar for the person in front of me AND the person behind me, big smile, "Here, let me get that for you." I'm all kinds of sorries and excuse-mes when squeezing past people in the aisles, I'm all "thanks so much" at every little interaction with the cashier. All of which you don't care about, and I wouldn't be posting if that was the whole story.

What makes this interesting is I'm not the only person doing this! I've had two grocery runs since I read that story, and I've encountered three other people also doing the same!

I wonder if that was the author's original intention? I wonder if maybe he ran into an asshat at the grocery store, so decided to instigate a mass effort of grocery-story counter-asshattery?

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