Wab blog – The Lady at the Spar
I was telling some gents the other day about the lady at the spar on sunday. I was in the Spar pic…
king up some fresh fruit. Whilst standing in the line to have the fruit weighed I could not help but notice how the lady weighing the fruit was not answering anybody upon being greeted. She would just take the bag of fruit from them, place it on the scale, slap on the sticker and then hand it back.
“hmmmm” I pondered, “why is she not greeting anyone?”
I quickly conjured a plan to get her to speak. When it came my turn to have my fruit weighted I handed her the first of my bags and said
“The lichis are looking quite good today, what do you reckon?”
To which she smiled, bowed her head slightly, slapped on a sticker and took my next bag. Dammit, I was running out of bags fast. I had to come up with something chop chop.
She was at least in her early to mid fifties, standing all day at the spar weighing packets of fruit can’t be fun. When it came time to take my last bag of fruit from me I held the bag for one inkling of a second longer than she expected, looked her straight in the eye when she looked up, and I said
“How are you?”
“I’m fine.” she replied, smiling.
Her breath was so strong with alchohol it was like being hit by a tank (a cornerhouse abrams tank i.e. hard). It was no wonder she was not talking. She was totally pissed! At first I thought this was one hardcore old bird. Getting pissed at work. Nice!
But then I looked at her feet. The cracks along the side of her shoes made it clear that she was no foreigner to standing at the scale weighing bags of fruit on a sunday as a woman having cleared fifty. So what I initially thought was bloody hilarious was, once again, sad as shit.
I tried not to pass out from the fumes as the commented on the lichis. We had a quick conversation about how rewarding it can be to eat lichis (because of extra effort involved in getting the f*ckers peeled) and then we parted ways.
I wondered about how hard it would be getting drunk at work. Probably not that hard. I get to sit on my ass in an air conditioned office in front of a super duper computer mutchien thinking about complicated problems that make me feel challenged, appreciated and content. I keep trying to think of why I am sitting here and she is standing there.
What did she do that has her weighing fruit most of her day and me weighing my thoughts for most of mine. Its definately not an intelligence thing. I know lots of people that are near retarded and yet programming EFT software for large banks all around the world. Loads of idiots that are ‘educated’ but wouldn’t know where to start when faced with a scale, some cracked shoes and a bag of fruit.
I don’t know the answer. I could splooge my thoughts about it all day but I probably still won’t know the answer. And I don’t think anybody really knows the answer.
I heard of one moron the other day moaning about how he is white, of the most ‘educated’ in the company he works for and yet can not afford to drive the BMW he saw a black man driving in traffic the other day. He wanted to know why does he have to suffer? Why can the black man drive the BMW and he can’t.
I suppose my question is not really why he can’t drive the BMW. Its more how the hell did this idiot get to the point where he can actually own a car that he can drive to work. Why isn’t he the one weighing fruit? Its his kind of attitude that deserves to be punished.
This is getting bitter.
I’m getting bitter.
