Tuesday, June 30, 2009

DOES THAT HURT OR CAN YOU JUST FEEL IT: SHEETZ FOR BRAINS

The other day I almost got my ass kicked by some redneck who didn't understand the concept of a line. You see there is this Sheetz, near my house and it is crazy busy. There is always a line and I actually feel bad for the cashiers because it seems they never get a break.
For the longest time there wasn't any sort of queue line directing the cattle to their slaughter of caffeine and nicotine. Some people, understood the concept of "One line for 4 registers." We all wait in one line and go to the next available cashier. It's that simple - just like a bank - but without the roped off area clearly marking where one would form a line. Maybe my friends and neighbors at Sheetz understand the concept but without a queue line they were all kind of lost. I'm not sure what the problem was but the management of the store obviously saw one and attempted to solve it.
When the queue line appeared it seemed to confuse the sheeple more than they were without it. The first day a man stood at the entrance to the line - with no one queued in front of him. I was completely baffled. Maybe he felt that walking 5 feet just to be the first person in line was too much trouble. Maybe he assumed that those already at the register were going to be quicker than they were. He was called to the register to pay and the line that had formed behind him shuffled forward. I thought maybe the five people in front of me would file into the queue because now we were blocking the entrance and every 14.5 seconds another customer had to push their way into the store. No, that is not what occurred. On the contrary, the bright young lady behind our first confused sack of meat stopped, read the sign that says "LINE FORMS HERE" and made the conscious decision to stand... RIGHT THERE.... where the sign said the line forms - at the ENTRANCE to the line. I mean if the sign says LINE FORMS HERE it must FORM HERE regardless of that whole roped off little line - looking thing BEYOND THE SIGN.
In the weeks after, I found myself laughing out loud at the sheer stupidity of the people I encounter at this convenience store every day. One day someone was waiting in line in reverse - and others shuffled silently behind them. Another afternoon there were two lines. The one that the smart people formed in the queue and the one the others formed on their own. Each line was feeding two registers instead of one feeding four.
This particular afternoon found me surpised to see everyone had formed a line. A simple line, in the correct way, facing the proper direction. The 8 people in my vicinity were at least smart enough to understand the concept of a line and the way Sheetz wished for customers to form one. It was amazing, and I sadly felt proud for my fellow man. 11 weeks and they finally got it.
Then, interrupting my silent celebration of the astounding intelligence of society in general, comes a man with beef jerky, a bag of Doritos, and and mouth full of chew bigger than a baseball pitcher's, stepping up to the front of the line as if he didn't see the long line that he should have been standing in. Now, I had been watching him for the entire previous transaction. I had already summed him up as the only person in the building that was too dim to understand the concept of waiting your turn in line. I started moving toward the register before the transaction before me was complete - staking my claim as the one destined to be next in line. This piece of shit was not cutting in front of me; not on the day when everyone else and their uncle was getting it right. The cashier turned toward me, looked me in the eye and said "I'll take the next person in line please." This douchebag proceeds to unload his gourmet dinner for one from his arms and looks to the cashier who is staring at me. She was being a total bitch in her ignorance of his presence, staring at me as I slide next to him and have my items promptly scanned. Einstein, who had obviously been shot down hard by a 19 year old girl at Sheetz, stepped back and said "Where does the line form?"
I matter-of-factually reply, "Where the sign says it does?"
He might have been deaf and dumb because as he assumes his place as the ass-end of the line he asks, "Whagew say?"
So I turned, looked him in the eye and answered, "I said where ... the ... sign ... says ... it ... does. I don't think he appreciated my dramatic pause. Perhaps he mistook it for condescension or misread it as patronizing, regardless he was definitely pissed. The cashier who laughed out loud at him might have made things worse but by the time I finished my transaction and turned, Sir-Thinks-Alot had been stewing for over 20 seconds and his face had turned beet red. This guy wanted to kick my ass in the worst way. On my way out the door I thought he might just be crazy enough to start something so I waited in the car for a minute so he would see that that i wasn't scared shitless of him and was actually waiting for him because I was the crazy one and he shouldn't have messed with me. He was probably freaking out the entire time he was in line because I hear I can be pretty intimidating with my bald head and go-t.
Since then I had to find a way for the idiots to not seem like idiots so I could stand in what they thought was a line without getting myself so frustrated that I was finding myself on the brink of a fist fight. My solution: pretend that they are all too smart than the average American and becasue of that they take the time to rebel from the oppression of the man. No one will tell these free-thinking people where to form a line. They form lines where they say they do.