Ok, so I had an interesting encounter in Wal-Mart today. Here's how it played out:
I was pushing my cart into the pet aisle, when I met another customer coming up the other side of the lane. Both of us had to maneuver a bit to get by, so I smiled, said excuse me and just threw out a comment about the aisle being small. You know, just normal small talk at the local Wal-Mart. Apparently this was an invitation to the gentleman that I wanted to spend the next 10 minutes complaining about the hundreds of faults of Wal-Mart. He proceeded to rant, with profanity, about how he was instrumental in getting the last Wal-Mart manager fired because of her incompetancy but the new one was even worse. He explained, "is it too much to ask that people getting paid even meager wages show a little respect and work hard?" Until this point I had been only listening and smiling awkwardly as I desparately searched for an escape route. But, now he wanted me to agree with him. What to do??? My reply was, yes, it would certainly be helpful if we were all more considerate to each other. With that I smiled, pushed my cart to the dog food brand that I needed, and hoped to make a clean, friendly getaway. Unfortunately I made the mistake of saying I hoped he found what he needed as I walked away. This got him started again, only now he was yelling all the way down the aisle to me. *laugh* Thankfully I was finally able to turn the corner and run.
Ok, so during this entire odd conversation, I kept wondering if this was someone I was supposed to really share some love and truth with. You know, when it was my turn to talk, should I have told him that being nice to the Wal-Mart workers might actually cause them to respect him more? Or was this someone that just wanted someone to listen to him and nod and smile? Hopefully he just needed a listening ear and didn't put me on his "bad" list next to the current Wal-Mart manager.
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Interesting. It reminds me of last week when I was at the gym running on the track. I had my tunes going, but as I passed by this guy, I could've sworn he was singing OUT LOUD to the tunes he had going in his ears. So, next time around, I made sure my music was off so that I could listen and yes, indeed, this dude was serenading me! And it was loud. And suprising. And amusing. Ok. So, it wasn't for me. But, he was singing to all of us on the track. Can't tell you what song it was or if it was more voice training than physical training, but it was interesting. Aren't surprising encounters kinda fun? :)
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