Four Men and a Tire
My parents always taught me that compassion for others is a very important trait to develop, but I am sad to report that my growth in that particular area has been stunted by continual exposure to the world and how it really works.
Thus, my approach to living is more based on the concept of schadenfreude - taking pleasure in others' misfortunes. This sounds horrible, I know, but I only take pleasure in the misfortunes of those who deserve misfortune, and when those who deserve it are doused with a bit of misery, I can barely contain my euphoria.
This was the case today when I went to mail some letters (snail mail does indeed still exist), and I saw something that truly made me laugh out loud, which is an event that is becoming less and less frequent.
I need to back up a couple days in order to tell the whole story. I went to this same plaza a couple days ago. It's the one with the S----y sub shop with the estimable Mr. Sandwich. There's also a really awful supermarket, the kind of place where there are more people returning bottles for deposit than there are shopping, an Every Shitty Thing You Could Possibly Imagine For $1 store, the world's worst Chinese buffet (steamed clams bleached white and floating in cloudy water...mmmm, MMM!), a post office that never has fewer than 10 people in line and a cute (sorry, I noticed) female clerk who has almost as much hair on her arms as I have on my head, and a Rent-A-C----r. Again, I do not want to embarrass this company, so I will refer to it as that rather than using the full name. In fact, let's make it easy and call it RAC.
Anyway, remember L----y Tax Service, the place that robs the poor and stupid and gives to the rich? RAC is based on the same principle. Their scam, however, is not taxes. These dead-eyed banditos have a deal where you can walk in and buy computers and stoves and high-tech coffeepots and Barcoloungers and other shit that of course no one with a normal number of chromosomes can live without on credit, without a credit check!
Now, great. But how much thought does it take to figure out that a place which will sell you things on time without a credit check might need to do a little interest-packing in order to make their nut?
In fact, I remember hearing a poor sap I know talking about having just gotten a computer through the generosity of these jerks, and later that day going to the store to look at the deal she got just out of curiosity and seeing that she was paying interest well into the double digits over a period of years to pay for a piece of shit computer that was worth about one-tenth the amount she would be paying over the long term.
So isn't that great? The assholes who run this business probably think they are doing these people a favor by affording them the chance to get an economic wedgie. In other words, at birth they lost their consciences even before they lost their foreskins. (And yes, I am sure most of these bosses are males.) Or. more accurately, they don't give a shit about anything other than collecting ridiculous levels of interest from the "special class" of consumers so that they themselves can buy shit that is far superior to the overpriced crap their customers are paying for, and paying forever and a day for.
So I drive into the parking lot for this dismal little plaza and I see a wonderful sight. There is a RAC delivery truck parked there, taking up about six spaces, and it has a flat tire. And there, staring at the flat tire as if they were looking at an unprovable calculus problem, are a guy who obviously was the RAC straw boss (I say this by dint of the fact that he was wearing a tie and sporting his nametag at a rakish angle) and three of his stupid humps. How great is that? I did my business, which took about half an hour because there were of course 10 people in line with complicated mail transactions and the hairy-armed woman had to ask each and every one of them questions about their little uninteresting lives, and these dumb fucks were still staring at the flat-assed tire when I went to my car.
I had to leave, so I took off, figuring that these four guys who no doubt could fuck up a wet dream seven ways from sundown would be there for at least seven or eight days trying to figure out what to do about the intellectually challenging problem of a flat tire on a company truck. I mean, how much fucking brain power does it take to figure out that you call a flat-changing outfit and then bill the company?
Anyway, I took off, and when I made my next trip to that plaza a couple days later the truck tire was good as new, and the chump humpers were ready to serve.
So I guess RAC was fine and back in business. OK, swell.
And then, when I went today, the goddamned tire was flat again, as was another one. TWO flat tires! Thisprobably required six people to stare at the things for an hour or so. A life problem twice as complex would require double the brain power, after all. I would like to think that this incident was somehow connected to someone who had a budgetary epiphany as to how much his electronically equipped babe-magnet den is really costing him. Or, better yet, the poor woman I know who was paying about $100 a month for six years for a $700 computer.
Perhaps I should have offered to change the tires for these guys for $20 a week, paid for the term of 18 months. With no credit check, of course. Interest statement available by request.
They probably wouldn't even have gotten the joke.
Thus, my approach to living is more based on the concept of schadenfreude - taking pleasure in others' misfortunes. This sounds horrible, I know, but I only take pleasure in the misfortunes of those who deserve misfortune, and when those who deserve it are doused with a bit of misery, I can barely contain my euphoria.
This was the case today when I went to mail some letters (snail mail does indeed still exist), and I saw something that truly made me laugh out loud, which is an event that is becoming less and less frequent.
I need to back up a couple days in order to tell the whole story. I went to this same plaza a couple days ago. It's the one with the S----y sub shop with the estimable Mr. Sandwich. There's also a really awful supermarket, the kind of place where there are more people returning bottles for deposit than there are shopping, an Every Shitty Thing You Could Possibly Imagine For $1 store, the world's worst Chinese buffet (steamed clams bleached white and floating in cloudy water...mmmm, MMM!), a post office that never has fewer than 10 people in line and a cute (sorry, I noticed) female clerk who has almost as much hair on her arms as I have on my head, and a Rent-A-C----r. Again, I do not want to embarrass this company, so I will refer to it as that rather than using the full name. In fact, let's make it easy and call it RAC.
Anyway, remember L----y Tax Service, the place that robs the poor and stupid and gives to the rich? RAC is based on the same principle. Their scam, however, is not taxes. These dead-eyed banditos have a deal where you can walk in and buy computers and stoves and high-tech coffeepots and Barcoloungers and other shit that of course no one with a normal number of chromosomes can live without on credit, without a credit check!
Now, great. But how much thought does it take to figure out that a place which will sell you things on time without a credit check might need to do a little interest-packing in order to make their nut?
In fact, I remember hearing a poor sap I know talking about having just gotten a computer through the generosity of these jerks, and later that day going to the store to look at the deal she got just out of curiosity and seeing that she was paying interest well into the double digits over a period of years to pay for a piece of shit computer that was worth about one-tenth the amount she would be paying over the long term.
So isn't that great? The assholes who run this business probably think they are doing these people a favor by affording them the chance to get an economic wedgie. In other words, at birth they lost their consciences even before they lost their foreskins. (And yes, I am sure most of these bosses are males.) Or. more accurately, they don't give a shit about anything other than collecting ridiculous levels of interest from the "special class" of consumers so that they themselves can buy shit that is far superior to the overpriced crap their customers are paying for, and paying forever and a day for.
So I drive into the parking lot for this dismal little plaza and I see a wonderful sight. There is a RAC delivery truck parked there, taking up about six spaces, and it has a flat tire. And there, staring at the flat tire as if they were looking at an unprovable calculus problem, are a guy who obviously was the RAC straw boss (I say this by dint of the fact that he was wearing a tie and sporting his nametag at a rakish angle) and three of his stupid humps. How great is that? I did my business, which took about half an hour because there were of course 10 people in line with complicated mail transactions and the hairy-armed woman had to ask each and every one of them questions about their little uninteresting lives, and these dumb fucks were still staring at the flat-assed tire when I went to my car.
I had to leave, so I took off, figuring that these four guys who no doubt could fuck up a wet dream seven ways from sundown would be there for at least seven or eight days trying to figure out what to do about the intellectually challenging problem of a flat tire on a company truck. I mean, how much fucking brain power does it take to figure out that you call a flat-changing outfit and then bill the company?
Anyway, I took off, and when I made my next trip to that plaza a couple days later the truck tire was good as new, and the chump humpers were ready to serve.
So I guess RAC was fine and back in business. OK, swell.
And then, when I went today, the goddamned tire was flat again, as was another one. TWO flat tires! Thisprobably required six people to stare at the things for an hour or so. A life problem twice as complex would require double the brain power, after all. I would like to think that this incident was somehow connected to someone who had a budgetary epiphany as to how much his electronically equipped babe-magnet den is really costing him. Or, better yet, the poor woman I know who was paying about $100 a month for six years for a $700 computer.
Perhaps I should have offered to change the tires for these guys for $20 a week, paid for the term of 18 months. With no credit check, of course. Interest statement available by request.
They probably wouldn't even have gotten the joke.
posted by Fiddler at 9:38 AM
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