Thesis: Customers are assholes.

Evidence: This afternoon, I was concentrating on some inventory task, when a very fat man in one of those motorized carts whistled at me to get my attention. (This already flustered and irritated me: I am not a dog.) I asked if I could help him, and he started gesturing, making a squeezing motion with his hands, then pointing at his ears and shaking his head.

At first I assumed he couldn't speak English (he was dark enough to be Hispanic), but it gradually dawned on me that he must be deaf, and I grew steadily more flustered as I tried to understand his sign language. I even asked him if he could fingerspell, since I have sort of an understanding of the ASL alphabet. He just kept pointing at his ears and gesturing.

Finally, he mimed writing. Lightbulb! I grabbed a pad of paper and a pen and watched, very earnestly attentive, as he painstakingly began to write--veeeery sloooowly. "C a n . . . y o u . . . t a l k."

"Uh . . . yes, I can talk." He points at his ears. Maybe he needs to find hearing aid batteries? Louder--and more confused--I say, "Yes, I can talk!"

And then he bursts out laughing. "So can I! I was just kidding with ya." And he continued to ask me where he might find a ketchup squeeze bottle.

So, I ask you, Livejournal: Where does confusing and embarrassing someone who is trying to help you, and wasting her time and energy, get funny? I was humiliated, and furious, and frustrated, and when he showed up later to pay for his damn ketchup bottle, I wanted to refuse to speak to him.

He pissed me off so much, I thought it would be worth the time to write a LJ post about it before collapsing into bed after an unexpected 16 hour workday. (Not Walmart's fault, for the record.)