I have something of a... well, let's call it an issue... with most sales people. This is tied in with my very low tolerance of blatant stupidity. Unfortunately, it often seems like stupidity is one of those things they issue to sales-people, right along with their name tag. As if, through the miracle of modern technology, their brain is coded onto their time-card, so that they give it up when they clock in at the beginning of their shift, and only get it back when they clock out at the end.
Now, I understand that people working sales work crap jobs, on crap hours, and have to deal with morons or with assholes like me. I understand that they're on their feet for far more hours than anyone should ever have to be and that they receive very little recompense for it. I appreciate those things, as one would a fine wine. But that doesn't mean I'm inclined to put up with their stupidity in my own life, any more than I'm inclined to put up with chiggers.
Recent examples of stupidity include:
Borders: I walk up to the counter with four books in my hands. One of them is a copy of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. I also have a book on Soviet political posters and the Russian impact on the modern world. "Wow," says the cashier, "you must really like Russia." I think I fixed her with a stare that would have turned gravel into dust. The conversation got better from there, with her asking if I was in a class, but I was a little floored, at first, by her profound statement of the obvious.
Levi's Store: "Hey," I say to the hip-looking sales clerk, "How's it going? Do you have these jeans in a thirty by thirty-four?" He frowns for a second, then shakes his head. "No, sorry, man, but we might have them in a thirty-four by thirty." What? Now, I'm not, I confess, a paragon of fitness, but neither am I one of those comically obese women who walk into a shoe store and ask to try on a shoe that could not possibly fit onto my elephantine foot; the sort of woman that frequently graced the off-moments of Married With Children. Generally, I'm trying to say here, I look more or less svelte when I'm in the right pair of jeans. Such as the sort I'd asked to see. The sort that I was, in fact, wearing at the time. What trick of the light made me appear four inches wider and four inches shorter than I am? What trick of logic made the hip-looking sales clerk think that a four inch difference in both directions would be functionally the same? Yes, he was trying to be helpful. However, helpful is "Sorry, we don't have those, but I can order them for you."
I fuckin' hate people.