Yesterday I stopped by Speedway to get a water and a protein bar.  I had the misfortune of being behind an elderly women purchasing lottery tickets.  I was late for a meeting and needed to get going.  There was an individual in front of the elderly women giving her time to prepare for her lottery ticket purchase.  Once it was her turn she proceeded to attempt to order $6 worth of Power Ball tickets.  The clerk told her that Powerball tickets were $2 a pop so she could get 4 tickets.  This threw me for a loop but didn’t seem too problematic for the purchaser who similarly to the clerk was unable to do basic math.  Finally the clerk realized that if you have six dollars and lottery tickets are two dollars a piece you can only afford three tickets, not four.  When it came time to to pull the trigger on the transaction the lady began searching in her purse for the money.  She could have had her money ready for the purchase since there was someone ahead of her in line, but like most old people she was in no particular hurry to get anywhere and too busy thinking about her cats to plan ahead.  This makes absolutely no sense to me.  The clock is ticking, wouldn’t you want to squeeze as much in as  you possibly can instead of wasting 20 minutes processing a lottery ticket purchase.  On top of that you are near death, what are you going to do with 400 million dollars?  (I am fully aware of the fact that I will be old some day, at least hopefully, and likely engage in similarly maddening behavior, but it will be intentional and not unknowing so that I can screw with people younger than me and use the excuse that it’s because I’m old)

Shirley dated a guy once upon a time  who based his gas station preference on the companies position on apartheid.  I on the other hand based my gas station preference on their variety of fountain drinks.  I was a speedway guy because you can get pretty much any fountain drink ever conceived at their gas stations.  Now, having given up carbonated beverages, I go there for their wide selection of protein bars.  However, if there was a gas station that didn’t sell lottery tickets I would be loyal to that particular gas station.  I don’t want to paint lottery participants with a broad brush, but they usually have no where to go and take their sweet time redeeming their scratch offs and deciding which new scratch offs to purchase with their winnings (if they happen to have winnings).  They also take a shit ton of time figuring out what to do when it comes to powerball or mega millions.  You couple that with old age and it is a truly aggravating situation that rivals being behind someone at the grocery store who is writing a check.

While I am on the topic of old people, I had another elderly incident this morning.  Driving on 131 back from Allegan there was a peckerhead in the far left lane going under the speed limit.  Ultimately I ended up passing him on the right, and when I made it past him the old fart flipped me the bird.  He was the one driving improperly and in violation of the law (I have had clients stopped for not passing on the left, but typically only if they have out of state plates because cops like to look for bullshit reasons to pull out of staters over ant then proceed to fuck with them, I had to use that word because that’s what cops do, if cops weren’t merely profiling out of staters my mother in law would have received at least 40 citations for driving in the left lane and not passing, she actually thinks it’s called the Rita lane not the left lane)   The guy probably thought he was driving on 28th street and traveling well over the speed limit but this seems to be a trend on todays highways.  How often do you see people in the left lane talking on their cell phones as cars go whizzing by them?  Do they no longer teach that the left lane is for passing in driver’s training?  Furthermore, when someone gets mad at me on the road and I know it’s not my fault but actually their fault I have this impulse to catch up with them, not to get into an altercation with them, but merely to explain to them that I was in the right and they were in the wrong and that they owe me an apology for baselessly getting angry with me.  Excuse me sir, I just want an apology, why do I have this crowbar in  my hand?  Well, that’s in case you don’t want to apologize.

Now I don’t want the elderly to think I am singling them out, but the U scan is also another area of life where the elderly often times seem to falter.  I can’t tell you how many times I have switched to a longer self checkout line because I knew the senior citizen in front of me was going to have a complete break down trying to purchase their three items and would need assistance from the person in charge of the U scan area at least twice prior to completing their purchase.  Honestly, I’m not even singling out the elderly, I have witnessed plenty of people varying in age poop down their leg when attempting to purchase their own groceries.  Similar to having to take a driving test to operate a motor vehicle, supermarkets should require some type of proficiency test before you can do the self checkout.  Not everyone has the capability of efficiently maneuvering through the U scan.  In all honesty, I pride myself in my U scan abilities and on the rare occasions where I don’t perform well in the U scan lane it’s as if I missed a game winning shot for the world championship of the world, I’m quite hard on myself.  It sticks with me for hours and can have a negative impact on my self confidence for the rest of the day.  If I can’t get the U scan right I’m clearly not capable of doing anything else today, I’m such a loser.  I let everyone down who was in line behind me!

Finally, one other thing, well I’m sure there are more things, but one thing in particular that drives me nuts is when someone is late and they lie to you about their ETA.  I will start out by saying I am guilty of this as well, but for some reason it is in our nature that when we are late for something we want to make it seem like we are right around the corner or just minutes away, when often times we haven’t even left the house.  If you were to sit back and think about what is worse, being late once or  being late multiple times, being late once is probably the better of the two?  Because if you are honest with the person inquiring as to when you are going to arrive you will only be late one time.  However, if you continually text or tell them I ‘m five minutes away when you are a half hour away you are late multiple times.   So lets keep it real and just be honest about ETA’s, it’s best for everyone.