Asshole

#1:

7am's commute interrupted by Charles Manson's shambling half-brother at the corner of Broadway and Granville. This clown, regular readers will recall, is a guy who typically picks a small and defenseless person -- in my neighborhood, a Chinese or Vietnamese grandmother -- and stands right in front of them, blocking their path till they cough up enough for their release. He's also a raging racist and homophobe, "chink" and "faggot" being two expressions that regularly pass his lips when someone refuses to empty the contents of their purse/wallet into his grimy hands. There are some truly hard-luck cases on Vancouver's streets who have received coins, food, or books from me (on occasion, all three), but Manson isn't one of them.

So, accosted this morning, I respond just as I always do: "Fuck off, Manson."

Today's delightful wrinkle: a young man on a bicycle, who overhears and proceeds to curse me out as follows: "Hey asshole, poor-basher, that's not cool, dude! Betcha voted for Gordon Campbell, didn't you! Randite!"

Fortunately the express bus comes, preventing further escalation.

#2

Books arrive at work in the middle of a very...slow...day. The customer proceeds to take each item out of the box in turn and talk it up, as if flogging knives on late night TV.

Most of the books are either very old and battered, or remainder-table favorites. One, an art catalog, is passable. Our last copy moved at $12.95. My offer: "$5 in cash on this one and no thanks on the rest."

"Hah! Asshole! This was $85US on the Internet this morning," says the vendor, confusing, as amateurs typically do, his paperback reprint with an original. "Richard Nixon's honester [sic] than you! Fucking ripoff jerk! Fucking ASSHOLE!"

#3

Sharpie Book Scout arrives. Bleached-out Andy Warhol hair, bleached soul patch, cloying hail-well-met-my-brother attitude covering previous ethically sketchy behavior. Showed up last week with boxes of mostly manky trade paperback bestsellers: Snow Falling on Cedars, etc. I combed through, bought about 5% of them. "Gee, should I take these to your other store?" wondered Mr. Bright-Eyed Innocent. "No need," I replied, "If we've seen 'em at one, we've bought for both the stores."

"Oh, okay," said Mr. SBS, who then proceeded to break all speed records between Main and Kits, arriving less than 15 minutes later, only to be shut down by my crack staff. Undeterred, returned 3 days later with the same manky books. So today I thought a subtle word was in order, re-iterating that there was no need to walk his boxes down the road. On any other day, things would have ended there. Not today!

"Hey, man, what's with all the passive aggression?" (Probably the first time in my life I've been accused of being "passively" aggressive) "You need to get laid, dude, you're bein' an asshole."

"You're outta here," I informed him. "Good luck selling to some other gullible sap."

"Fucking ASSHOLE!"

Rinse 'n repeat....
- posted by cjb @ 10:56 PM