As a personal rule, I try to assume the best of all people. This usually causes me a lot more pain than just assuming everyone is a self-centered idiot, but I’m not ready to become a complete curmudgeon. Particularly, if someone appears to be especially unintelligent, I try to save judgment for after I’ve made an attempt to get to know the individual.
This was the case with Bill, the 400 pound, former overnight clerk that had just been “promoted” to working the evening shift. My very first shift at the store had been with Bill and the manager warned me that he was pretty stupid and to not take anything he says very seriously. But I feel like I have to be the guy who gets along with everyone, so I spent most of this shift, and every following interaction, trying to strike up a conversation and at least become friendly with him.
I failed.
For starters, Bill just isn’t ignorant, he’s completely stupid. Worse yet, he’s one of those stupid people who are under the impression that they’re one of the few really intelligent people on the face of the earth and that everyone else is a complete moron.
He constantly criticizes other employees and Kevin, the store manager, but kisses the ground that the owner and regional managers walk on. As far as I can tell, he’s not doing this to get anyone fired or to become manager himself, he just believes that everyone but him is a thief, trying to steal the store blind.
Furthermore, he’s completely impossible person to engage in a conversation with. During one of his lengthy criticisms of Kevin, he talked about how, “Shit like this never would have happened when I worked at Taco John’s.” I attempted to engage him by talking about working at Wendy’s in high school and he started making fun of me, saying, “You have to be pretty desperate to work at a shithole like Wendy’s.” This got me wondering about the hierarchy of fast-food shitholes and that Wendy’s couldn’t possibly fall below Taco John’s, but I didn’t think Bill would have anything to add to this debate.
Another time, Bill started talking about his trip to Hawaii with his family the year before and how complicated it was to organize the work schedule with him off overnights for two weeks. He spoke rather highly of the vacation, but every time he talked about food, it involved the family stopping at McDonalds or Denny’s. “You won’t believe how expensive a Big Mac is there,” he said. When I asked if he had tried any of the local food, he just laughed and said, “That fish shit is bullshit.” Yes, that’s a direct quote. He also talked about an amazing adult bookstore warehouse he visited on the island of Maui. Yes, he was on vacation from working in a porn store, in the tropics and went shopping in another porn store WITH HIS FAMILY!
All of a sudden, I started a conjectural biography for Bill. Clearly, a guy his size must have been made fun of growing up. But instead of using this experience to develop a clever wit and biting sense of humor, he learned to parrot back the things that kids said to him in junior-high school. I made the leap that a family who visits Hawaii and shops at a porn store there isn’t very smart as a whole, so his mindset was probably encouraged most of his life. His older brothers and mother must have been nice to him growing up because he talks about them as the smartest, most successful people on the planet.
One evening, Bill opened up to me about his stepdad. “The guy was an asshole,” basically summarizes everything he said during that 15 minute monologue (for lack of a better descriptive work) and he has no contact with his biological farther. Because of his experience with his, possibly abusive, stepfather, Bill doesn’t drink and derides everyone (except his brother, who only drinks the most expensive scotch) who does. He feels that drinking is stupid and a complete waste of time. It also killed his stepdad, who asphyxiated on his own vomit after a night of heavy drinking. “I never got that,” he explained. “If you started choking, why wouldn’t you just wake up and turn your head?”
Clearly, Bill wasn’t a drinker.
As obnoxious as this guy is, he’s also fascinating. I feel like I could fill a book with nothing but my experiences and quotes from him.
The best experience yet came about when I tried to talk to him about heavy metal. His pickup truck had an Obituary sticker on the back, so I figured this was an easy way to get him to start talking. The results would have been hilarious if they weren’t true. He didn’t seem to understand what I was talking about when I brought up the band name, so I finally explained that I knew he liked metal because of the sticker on the back of his truck. “Oh, that,” he said. “Yeah, I thought it meant… you know… that car they use to move dead people?”
“A hearse?” I suggested.
“Yeah… that.”
Unbelievable!
No comments:
Post a Comment