I live for those moments when I sniff trouble in the wind. Call me a nosy busybody, call me an observer of life’s dramas, I don’t care.
But if something’s about to go down, call me!
Here’s the drama that happened at the Verizon store in Bridgehampton. I was in line for customer service with about six others. My husband sat nearby scanning a newspaper. He is not as observant as I am, which I think is too bad, but it’s what he calls minding his own business.
We were minding our own business but …
All was quiet until the front door flew open and through it stormed a woman in five-inch heels, tight bleached jeans, a heavily bedazzled denim jacket, carrying a purse with a small poofy dog. A girl dog. Her pink bow was bedazzled. (I did mention this was in the Hamptons, right?)
This woman covered the distance from the front of the store to the back in five lunging steps, ignoring the line for “the rest of us” and slammed a box on the counter, shouting, “I demand to see the manager!”
I made eye contact with others in line. Strangers, we shared one collective thought: Oh, goody, goody!
I’ll skip the details of her 10-minute sputtering rant, because it’s what we’ve come to expect from those who “demand” to see the manager, “know people!” and threaten to “go corporate!” when the manager is tied up on an important call (or, as in this drama, cowering in the back, appearing only after the coast was clear.)
When we left I said to my husband, “Well, that was something!”
“What was?” he asked.
Airing of the Cracker Barrel grievances
More recently we stopped at a crowded Cracker Barrel where there was a wait to be seated. I don’t mind waiting in line, on account of that “observer” thing I have going. The woman ahead of us though, didn’t. I smiled at her. She did not smile back. That always hurts my feelings.
Her husband was Joe. We all knew that because when Joe wandered away to look at the old-timey toys she’d holler, “Joe! Stay here. We’re almost next.”
Eventually the host, Nathan, asked her name and said, “OK, Angie, 10 minutes.”
“But why?” Angie pointed out empty tables, pulling Joe toward them. Right away I’m thinking, “Oh, goody, goody!”
“People are ahead of you,” Nathan explained.
“Well we’re here and they’re not!”
“Ma’am, it doesn’t work that way. I’ll call you. Next!”
When Nathan said “10 minutes” to me, I flashed my Mother Teresa smile and said, “that’s fine, dear.” Angie was still not smiling.
Wherein Angie bemoans her lot
Her name was called, then ours, and we were seated at a nearby table.
We got water right away.
“They got water,” Angie said to Joe, looking directly at me. Joe was busy with the golf tees and wooden triangle game.
When Nathan passed, she requested water and told him to adjust the air conditioning.
“Isn’t it freezing?” she asked newcomers. “I told the host. I’ll tell them again if they ever bring us our water.”
The waitress brought them water, took their order, turned it in, then took ours.
We got our iced teas but they didn’t get their coffees. Angie flagged down the waitress who was waiting for a hot pot. Angie said it would be hot if someone would turn down the AC.
She kept shooting me dirty looks while she inspected, then cleaned, the cutlery, as if this frustration, water spots and too much air conditioning was all my fault.
I kept smiling because I am, by nature, a Kumbaya kind of person. But that went right up the Cracker Barrel chimney as I prayed, “Dear Lord, thank you for this food we are about to receive, and please, please, PLEASE let ours come first.”
It did, and Angie slammed around her polished silverware, knocking plastic golf tees off the table, but by then I stopped paying attention because biscuits always distract me.
How could you miss all that?
When we left Angie was having “a word” with the manager. I smiled. She ignored me.
My husband hadn’t noticed the Cracker Barrel drama.
“How could you miss all that?” I asked him.
“Because I mind my own business,” he said.
Yeah. Well … that’s no fun.
A former Associate Editor of the Shelter Island Reporter, Joanne has won multiple awards for her humor columns in both the Suffolk Times and the Reporter. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Southern Living, Cosmopolitan, Family Circle and other publications. She wrote a column, “Can We Talk”, in Toastmaster, a magazine for Toastmasters International, and was an award-winning humorist/commentator for WPBX radio in Southampton. She and her husband, Hoot Sherman, live on Shelter Island.
“Call me a nosy busybody” is Joanne Sherman’s latest Off the Cuff column. You can read past posts by following this link.
