Kids have been back to school for... what... 3 or 4 weeks. I'm still not used to how QUIET it is around here.
I had errands to run this morning. It's chilly, I had to wear the fleece (bicycling of course). First stop was the Post Office. The Post Office just freaks me out. I mean, everyone there is just so eerily NICE. What is up with that? And I don't mean the other patrons waiting in line, I mean the actual Postal employees.
Not only are they NOT grumpy, NOT apathetic, NOT robotic, but they are just downright pleasant and helpful and weirdly friendly. I would almost think it was a private for-profit biz rather than a government funded entity. No, it's not that government funded entities are just better here. I've been to the local DMV, and that's just as insensible as anywhere else.
Next stop was the library. I was picking up a couple of books from the hold shelf for a couple of my local slavedrivers. As I was doing so, there's a mom there with her young son. I'd say he was about 5 or 6. Mom is gabbing on her cell phone while doing something on one of the library computers. Meanwhile, Junior is rearranging the precisely alphabetized books on the hold shelf.
Then, THEN he takes the big letter things - those big lettered tabs that show where the books are as far as the alphabetizing goes - and starts pulling them out and sticking them in at random spots on the shelves.
Is it me or is that just wrong? Sure, there are worse things he could be doing while mom is choosing to be oblivious. Sure, there are worse things she could be ignoring while talking on a cell phone. Anyway, it bothered me.
Think I'll go back to the post office to feel better.
.
5 comments:
I wonder if the post office is trying to put on a new, friendlier face. Maybe they want to shuck that bad reputation that created the phrase "Going Postal!"
I don't think you're overreacting to the mom & son at the library. Is she really SO important that she has to have a phone conversation in the library? Where it's supposed to be quiet? While her son exhibits destructive behavior completely unnoticed? I think the whole cell-phone thing has gotten out of control and we need to develop some universal rules of etiquette.
That woulda bugged the crap outa me. I don't think I coulda let it go without some sorta fracas.
We were in charge of post-game snackage over the weekend. One picky-eating player scraped off the mayo/lettuce mixture from the chicken sammich bun, discreetly letting it drop to the floor behind the bench. He THOUGHT no one saw it.
But he was mistaken.
I'm mean enough I would have probably said something to the kid and/or in the mom - in a nice way, of course, but being an ex-library science student, this kind of thing just rubs me wrong. I love for kids to explore the library, but they need to do it supervised (and in the children's section preferrably).
I won't make any "going postal" jokes...but you do know they stopped hiring and now use their own genetically engineered stepford people...
Everyone knows that....don't they?
I make people like that mad because I go over to the little kid and say, "You'd better stop that" and put on my mean dad face. I don't care. Usually the mom will pretend to be shocked and dismayed. It's probably easier for me to pull it off because I am a big guy in a black hat. I look at a kid mean, he grabs mom's skirts and hides.
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