Pet peeve-- the little old ladies who stop right in the middle of the aisle
Ahhh. I knew there was something I wanted to tell you. I rarely lose my temper at work. Well, at least at the public. My supervisors get to see The Dark Side on a regular basis. Which is A Good Thing, since it keeps them from hanging around my letter case annoying me and getting in the way.
But one day this week... my route was plagued with empty-headed drivers. I've never seen so many people blocking the way. The UPS driver and I were rolling our eyes at the dopes we had to contend with. And then...
I was in a very crowded parking lot and needed to pull ahead a few hundred feet to get to a large commercial building. A delivery van was double parked on my left, and I was squeezing by on his right. There was a beat up blue car right in front of me... and the driver was backing up. I honked. She waved. I honked again. She waved again. I yelled out the door Pull up! I have to get by you!. She waved again, obviously wanting me to back up.
Well, we have a rule against backing up. A high percentage of our vehicle accidents are the result of backing. There is no rear window in these trucks, and no windows along the back panels, so we have very limited visibility when backing. I have a small fisheye mirror to let me see what's immediately behind me, but I can't see much. So I wasn't about to risk tearing somebody's fender off in order to please this fool in front of me.
But it became apparent that she simply wasn't going to move forward. So I parked my truck right behind her, pulled out the tubs of mail I needed and hiked off to the building. I was really steaming.
The moose was waiting for me when I came out of the building a few minutes later. She was a big one, maybe three hundred pounds in her stocking feet. She began howling about how rude I was, blah, blah, blah. This was not a good move on her part. I managed to refrain from using expletives and otherwise comparing her to barnyard animals, but everyone else within earshot was wincing and wide-eyed. My verbal blast barely registered on the moose, and she waddled off to the food tasting seminar that had unfortunately attracted her in the first place, licking her chops, her nostrils flaring in appreciation.
This is only the second time I can remember having a customer get under my skin. Usually I'm an expert at defusing trouble. But not this time.... |
