Mostly Autobiographical Page 16

  Watch. That guy’s going to be taking a special trip to the TSA security office.

  That guy might end up on some sort of a problem list. But what about all of these little kids? At some point, you can sympathize, it’s obviously harder, having to navigate them plus your luggage plus your kids’ luggage. Kids are always knocking over those line formers. Or they’re pulling out the fabric. Or they’re jumping under the fabric, back and forth, knocking somebody else’s luggage into a line former. A TSA guy shows up. “I’m sorry sir, you’re going to have to come with us.” Every mess these kids make, whoever they bump into, it’s like, “Did you just get knocked into by some kid? Yeah, you’re going to have to come with us.” And then finally after you’ve fended off the carry-on guy – you were very assertive! – you still can’t get your kids to sit still, to just stop running around and wait in line, please. So they stand quiet for a minute because you yelled at them, but every time they get to a new line former they silently unclip the fabric and it zips all the way back into the pole, so you have to try to fix it. And that’s when the airline representative is going to turn on you. It’s unavoidable.

  But wasn’t I talking about the post office? It’s all very similar, just no TSA. And I don’t know how your post office is laid out, but at mine there used to be this shortcut line, like if you were just picking up a package, you didn’t have to wait on the general line. But they’ve since done away with that, and now everybody waits. So you’ll be waiting for ten, fifteen, forty-five minutes when you see somebody just head right over to the last window, like, pretending that they didn’t know the express line has since been eliminated, and nobody’s saying anything, not a clerk, no other line waiters.

  You’ve got to get aggressive. You’ve got to assert yourself into the situation and tell that guy, “Listen buddy, back of the line, all right?” to which he might just kind of look at you, not responding but thinking to himself, “Why don’t you just mind your own business, all right?” So then you repeat yourself.

  And maybe there’s a postal police officer there, it doesn’t always happen, but they make rounds to the branches every now and then, and he might come over and be like, “What’s the problem?”

  So you say something like, “No, I was just asking this guy where he gets his fireworks shipped in from.”

  The postal police guy won’t even say anything, he’ll just look at the line cutter and point to that door in the corner, like you and me, let’s go have a little chat in that office over there, OK?

  Justice was served, and I was the server

  One night a while ago I was at work waiting tables. My shift had just started, and the line was already out the door. My section got sat immediately and, as per corporate policy, I approached my guests to take a drink order no later than thirty seconds.

  A middle-aged couple had already brought their martinis from the bar. When I went over to say hi, to get the ball rolling, they didn’t even look up at me. They barked dismissively, “We just sat down. We’re not even close to being ready.”

  Terrific. Great. I’m doing fine, thanks. Nice to see you too. It doesn’t happen all the time, but I hate it when people go out to a restaurant almost refusing to have any sort of interaction with the staff. You don’t want to be bothered at all tonight? You don’t even want me to come over and take your order?

  I gave them five minutes. Then I returned and tried to tell them the specials. They still didn’t look up at me. The man cut me off midway through the fish and said, “Why don’t you come back in five minutes?”

  At this point I was trying really hard to not appear pissed off; I went to say, “OK, sure,” but before I could even make it through that response, he cut me off again, “Maybe ten minutes.” And he and the woman he was sitting with just kind of extended their smiles, like they were totally conscious of how rude they were being, like they were enjoying it.

  Everything went as you’d imagine it would after an intro like that. They sat around for like half an hour before they even picked up their menus. They took another half hour to order. And after their empty plates were finally cleared, they stayed in my section, sat at my table, for the entirety of the night. For five hours they camped out and drank martinis and got drunk and ignored my glances toward the check, my silent pleading to please, please, get out of my life here, go away and let me make some money from somebody else.

  They started out sitting across from each other, but as the night progressed, as they downed more booze, they wound up side-by-side. Then they started cuddling. Then making out. It was gross. All the while I had to just stand there and watch these two get it on. I had to pace around helplessly, watching all of my coworkers work, for actual customers, actually making money.

  I’m not exaggerating when I say this was one of the worst customer experiences I’ve ever had as a waiter. From five in the afternoon until closing, they just sat there, occasionally ordering a drink, totally blocking me from selling meals, never looking up as to so much as acknowledge my presence, my existence as a human being, casually denying my need to make tips for a living, something impossible to do with a couple of graying lovebirds making fools of themselves in the middle of the restaurant.

  Cut to last night. It was the beginning of another busy Friday at the restaurant. The bar was already packed, a line forming at the greeter’s podium. And guess who sat down right away in my section? That same couple. That same guy with that same bullshit smile. I didn’t know what to do. My heart dropped to the soles of my feet. I couldn’t take another night of being fleeced by these jerks, another night of being leisurely ignored, of being used, stepped on, impotent with boiling rage, forced to smile and say, “Thank you, sir. Very well, ma’am.”

  Both the man and the woman were talking on their cell phones. I considered shoving the menu in their face and pointing right to the bottom where it says, “Please refrain from using your cell phone in the dining room.” I wanted to grab a permanent marker, I wanted to add “asshole!” to the end of that sentence and then show it to them.

  What was I going to do? Was I going to blow up? Get fired? Have no job? No, I couldn’t do anything. I was powerless, and that feeling of powerlessness, that knowledge that these people were in complete control of my life, of my job right then, it was just coursing through my body. I was growing numb, something dying inside.

  I waited for them to close their phones and I put on my own bullshit smile. “Hello. Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Just water,” they both said.

  Huh. No martinis today. Maybe they wouldn’t be staying. Maybe I was in luck. I dropped off their water. I didn’t even bother with the specials. I didn’t feel like giving them the opportunity to cut me off or tell me to go away.

  But the lady chimed in, “I had something the last time I was here, a salad,” and she proceeded to tell me all about her previous meal, “I was sitting right there. It was six months ago.”

  Six months ago? I said, “No, you were here a month ago, and you were sitting right there. I was your waiter.”

  “No,” she told me, “I haven’t been here in at least six months.” And then she looked over at the guy, who cuts in with a, “Well, maybe I was here for lunch.” And then he looked up at me, his smile breaking only slightly, and went, “You must have remembered me.”

  I couldn’t believe how quickly the situation had reversed itself. I made direct eye contact and told him, “Yeah. I totally remember.”

  This was unbelievable. This had to have been his wife, and the lady from a month ago must have been someone on the side. That’s why they were staying in the restaurant all night, getting drunk and making out. They had nowhere else to go. The whole thing was illicit. And now he was back in the same restaurant with his wife, and he happened to have the same waiter he’d screwed over the last time.

  There was a complete emotional one-eighty. Whereas before I was pissed, ready for the worst, trying to weasel my way out of the shift, now I was pumped. I
absolutely held the advantage. There was no way I was going to get pushed around by this guy, not tonight, not ever again. The couple ate their meals in like ten minutes, paid the check, left like a twenty-five percent tip, and they were gone.

  Sweet vindication. Much like a hot glass that’s suddenly filled with ice-cold water, my body was reacting similarly to the extreme change in emotion and temperament. For the rest of the night I was pulsing, on edge in a good way, just slightly on top of everything. I’d been down and then lifted right up again all in the course of like ten minutes. It was almost too much to process.

  I’ve never had such good karma pointed immediately in my direction. Somehow the universe righted my wrong. And I showed remarkable, almost inhuman restraint. I could have totally refused to play his game. I could have been like, “No, it was dinner. You two ordered a bunch of martinis. Don’t you remember? You stayed all night.” But that would have cheapened it. Looking back, it was all worth it for those few seconds of eye contact, that pure moment of non-verbal communication, my silent, “Fuck you, buddy. Just finish up and get out of my restaurant.”

  Andre and me on a boat

  Andre and me, we went on a fishing trip last weekend, just the two of us. We hadn’t spoken since his grandmother’s funeral. I guess he needed time to grieve. Things had just gotten so sour between us. It was like every time we were around each other, we’d immediately bicker, things would escalate, slowly, steadily, until one of us lost our cool and, you know, that would be it. We wouldn’t speak again for weeks, months.

  It must have gotten weird with our extended group of friends because my buddy Cliff told me, “Hey, Rob. Look, Andre wants to make amends, but he’s really nervous, with everything that’s gone down. Anyway, he wanted me to invite you upstate, a nice little fishing trip. You guys can like, you know, rekindle your friendship.”

  And I thought, wow, that’s pretty deep. But I only thought that for a second. Because then another thought replaced that first thought, and that new thought was this: no way Andre sent Cliff over to invite me upstate. It’s probably the larger group of friends, all of them deciding they need us to settle things, to make it easier for the whole group to hang out, and so they drew straws and Cliff got picked to come to me, telling me Andre sent the invite, and then he’d go to Andre and say I sent the invite.

  Everybody’s seen this episode before. We’d be sitting on that little fishing boat, just the two of us in the middle of some big lake. And we’d both be fishing at opposite ends of the boat, not looking at each other, not saying anything, both of us with really grumpy looking expressions on our faces. And finally, just as the silence becomes too unbearable, we’d both say simultaneously, “Well aren’t you going to apologize? What? Me? You! Why did you even invite me on this fishing trip? What? invite ? invited !”

  We got out on the lake, I let him stew for a little bit, and finally I broke the silence with, “Andre, look, I brought you up here because, well, this is kind of hard for me to say, but I wanted to apologize.” And I really had to stop myself from throwing in my customary, “Because I wanted to be the bigger person,” because even though I was being the bigger person, that’s how these things always unfold. I figured this time, actions, not words. Or, not actions exactly, but more subtle words. More clever. Cleverer. I know I’m the bigger person. So I don’t have to go flaunting it.

  “What are you talking about?” Andre shot back. “I sent Cliff over to you because you never answer my calls. I set this whole trip up.” Which sounded like a bunch of baloney. I always take Andre’s calls. I always take all of my phone calls. Andre just wanted to get Cliff involved, to get everybody involved, to show off, to show me up.

  Now I was getting upset, and I wasn’t even thinking this stuff in my head anymore. I was saying it out loud. “You just wanted the rest of the group to think you’re being the bigger person, that you’re the one always making amends. At least I showed up to your grandma’s funeral. You didn’t even call me when my grandma died!”

  Which wasn’t true. Andre totally came to my grandma’s funeral. I didn’t even know why I said that. It was because I was so angry, I guess. And Andre didn’t say anything either. I guess he knew, at that point anyway, it was stupid to even try to keep talking.

  But the worst part was, the whole me telling him I wanted to apologize, that was only part one of my plan. After we had made amends, I wanted us to have a little laugh, something funny, funny but natural, like an organic, bonding type of laugh. So I bought this magnetic fishhook. The idea is to use the magnetic fishhook to attract your friend’s fishhook, and then you start reeling it in, slowly. Your friend thinks he has a bite and starts pulling, and you keep fighting it out for a while until you realize that your hooks are hooked together. That was supposed to be the organic laugh. We’d have made amends, and then we’d see the hooks, and it was supposed to be like, look, we’re hooked together. And we’d have laughed and laughed and realized how silly all of this was.

  But nothing was happening. It wasn’t attracting. So I kept reeling in and casting out again, really close to the boat, over and over, getting more and more frustrated. And then I turned to Andre, and he was doing the same thing, in and out, over and over. And I was like, wait a second. I looked at his back pocket. Sticking out was the same packaging, the same, “Magnetic Trick Fishhook” wrapper. The two magnets must have been repelling each other. And I was thinking, Jesus Andre, you unoriginal jerk, you can’t just let me have one trick fishhook gag? You really just can’t let me have one real, genuine moment, can you?

  Robots are better than people

  Robots are much better than people. Robots don’t get mad if you take that last slice of pie, even if they were saving it, even though they put it on a plate, wrapped the whole plate in plastic wrap, put it not in the fridge, but in the microwave, because they were going to eat it soon. And they wrote out this really long note, it said, “Please do not eat this slice of pie. I’m saving it in here because I didn’t want to leave it out and attract bugs. Please, please do not touch this pie. My mom drove all the way out to a pie shop at the end of Long Island to get it for me. It’s my favorite, and I’m really looking forward to eating it.”

  Because robots don’t have feelings.

  You program them to do this or say that, but if you change your mind later on, you just program them to do or say something else. Plus, when have you ever seen a robot write out a stupid long note like that? If a robot tried to grab a pen and paper, one, their giant metal hands would probably crush the pen, getting ink everywhere, and two, even if they somehow successfully calibrated the necessary pressure to effectively grip the pen without all of that exploding, there’s no way they’d then be able to apply that same gentle touch from pen to paper without some sort of a ballpoint malfunction. Also, what kind of a robot doesn’t at least have some sort of a printer attachment installed, however rudimentary, like those little receipt printers at department stores? You’re telling me that whoever designed a robot sophisticated enough to craft out a whole boring message about pie wouldn’t at least have thought to include one of those little printers? Unlikely.

  Besides, robots don’t even eat strawberry rhubarb pie. They don’t eat pie at all. Or anything. They just eat electricity, maybe some diesel and grease.

  Robots are much better than other people. They don’t constantly come out of their bedrooms at two o’clock in the morning and say, “Yes, I can still hear the TV. Well, lower it again. Look, I don’t care if the gameplay isn’t as immersive with the volume down that low, I have to get up for work in four hours, so for the last time, just lower the volume, go to sleep. Jesus,” over and over again, the same speech they gave at one o’clock in the morning, the same whiney complaint they’re going to come out and do at three o’clock in the morning. No, because robots don’t sleep at all.

  And they clean up for you instead of asking you to “clean up after yourself for a change!” They might have little vacuuming robots attached to
their feet, so wherever they go they leave two trails of noticeably cleaner tracks behind them.

  Robots are entirely preferable to all people, to all human beings. They’re never coming knocking on your door, telling you, “Listen buddy, I don’t know how you keep getting into our encrypted Wi-Fi network, but you’ve got to stop stealing our Internet. Just pay for your own. It’s like thirty bucks a month. Seriously, you’re mooching our signal, you’re pirating gigs and gigs of porn. You know I get calls from the cable company? They’re like, ‘stop illegally downloading all of that porn.’ I don’t know what to do. Just … you know, you’re smart enough to hack my router, why don’t you get a job doing computers? Come on man, just get out of the house once in a while. You look like shit. Seriously, no more Internet. I’ll call the cops,” every other week. They never call the cops.

  Finally, after months of toothless threats, they’re banging on your door at eight in the morning, showing you a warrant, confiscating your computer, your hard drives. Robots don’t care. They’ve got built-in Wi-Fi. Robots are like walking Internet hotspots. And what do they care about thirty dollars a month? Robots have no sense of money, of currency, of personal wealth. Robots love to share. They’re not so judgmental.

  Given the choice between robots and people, I’ll always choose robots. Robots are never like, “Come on, stop using my toothbrush! That’s great that you’re not grossed out by germs, and no, I don’t want to hear another speech about personal micro-biomes, just stop using my goddamn toothbrush!” Because, one, robots don’t have to brush their teeth, and two, if they did, they wouldn’t spend a hundred and forty dollars on a super fancy toothbrush and leave it out in the bathroom, all, look, enjoy the view, but never touch, and don’t even think about using it. Because of course I’m going to use it, because, what are you, crazy? And they won’t laugh at the personal micro-biome thing, because they’ll know that you’re going to want as many germs in your mouth as possible. If they had mouths. If they had teeth. But robots don’t have teeth. Just gears and circuits and microprocessors and motherboards.