Bookstore Blues

I was just in the school bookstore. For those of you who are unaware, when one walks into bookstore, one must leave one's bags in the front of the store. This is a reasonable rule, as security is otherwise pretty lax. It would be pretty easy to walk out with something, even without your bag. Letting people bring their bags into the main area of the store would be like inviting theft. I have no problem with this.

However.

When I walked into the store, I put my bag down behind some others that were sitting on the floor in front of the shelves. As I walked toward the rest of the store, a voice called out from one of the registers.

"Excuse me sir?"

I looked up to the source of the voice. Surely the voice wasn't directed at me. I had done what I was supposed to do. It was a woman in a tie-dyed shirt, working behind one of the registers. And she was looking at me.

"Could you place your bag on the shelf instead of the floor?"

I looked down at my bag, leaning against the shelf. I looked at the multiple bags lying in front of my bag, in the middle of the floor. I looked back and forth between my bag, neatly placed very nearly already on the shelf, and the other bags, which seemed not even to acknowledge the shelf; the bags sitting there, as if there were not a shelf at all.

Seriously? I'm the problem? Really? What about these fuckers? Where were you when these happened? You fell down on the job, tie-dye shirt register lady!

I moved my bag to the shelf, realizing that a conflict of such idiotic levels really wasn't what I needed. Then I spent about three minutes in the store. I really was just there to kill time. However, now this situation was in my head and it had soured the appeal of mindlessly wandering the bookstore. I decided to leave. I walked to the front of the store. There were fucking six more backpacks piled in front of the shelves. In front of my bag. What the fuck? Seriously, what the fuck? I looked at tie-dye register lady. She was working diligently behind her register.
What the fuck tie-dye shirt register lady?? Come on! I was the single problem? Did she not like how my bag accented the other bags?

All of this has made me decide that fuck that shit. I'm putting my bag where I want. I'll leave it at the front of the store and that's where my end of this social contract ends. Tie-dye shirt register lady: fuck you. I have no time for your bullshit.

Also, your tie-dye shirt makes you look like an idiot.

xoxo,
Ryan