I am standing two people back in line.
I am watching with awe as the man in line goes through this transaction as though it is the first time he has ever purchased goods in a shop. He seems amazed when the cashier asks him for money, digs through his bag for a few long seconds until he finds his wallet. Then he digs through that for a few long seconds until he finds the money. Then he digs through the coin purse until he finds the right change.
This kind of thing no longer surprises me, since it happens every single time I stand behind someone in line at a shop. For some reason, when Czech people buy goods in a shop, they appear surprised and confused to the point that it would suggest that they are actually aliens in borrowed human bodies.
I have no idea why.
All I know is that I hate this man.This is more my problem than his. Waiting is an activity I do with great strain. Sometimes I have to actively calm myself when a tram gets caught at a stoplight or in traffic. So when someone makes me wait, they are instantly on my shit list. In reality, this guy is probably “wasting” about 9 seconds of my time by his behavior. And no doubt if I were engaged in a conversation I wouldn’t even notice his aggravating checkout attitude.
I would certainly never do anything like shout at him or make a comment. I just grumble in the satin-covered, Led-Zeppelin-playing Utopia that is my brain. Nevertheless, I hate him. Like with the white hot intensity of a million suns.
The cashier is a podgy woman in her early fifties. And when she sees that I am in line she literally groans aloud and rolls her eyes. She does this every time she sees me. Exactly this. So I am not surprised, but it still gives me a moment of pause.
I am not the most likeable person on the planet. Oh, I am OK. I generally greet people with a smile and a hello. But I know there are people out there who hate my living guts. And what’s more, I deserve it.
But sometimes I evidently elicit the extreme hatred of a person I do not know. Specifically, this seems to be this cashier, a reception guard at the university, and a woman who sells fruit at the bottom of my hill.
Now, I am OK with being hated if I deserve it, but I do wonder what I could have done to inspire such hatred from these people. I have had probably twenty interactions with the women selling things, and those have been all of one minute long, and I am sure I was pleasant. I am always pleasant to people selling me food.
I have said dobrý den (good day) to the security reception worker every day for the last six years, and I have been greeted in return with the cold stare of fetid death. I can’t imagine what I have done to deserve this.
But who knows? Just as I hate waiting, maybe these three women hate something that I have subjected them to for the last six or seven years. Squeaky shoes. Bad Czech. Brown hair. Who knows? I guess what comes around goes around.
And then it makes you wait in line.
