Smiley face

I feel that I need to preface this story with the fact that I am generally considered to be very friendly and perky. In fact, I have been reprimanded by my supervisor within the last few months for being both too perky and too friendly. Which made me cry. I LIKE being friendly.

I believe the preface is needed, because the rest of this story may belie those facts. Yesterday, when I was in line at Best Buy buying a Christmas present, I was congratulating myself on doing most of my shopping online so that I don't have to stand in these crazy lines all the time, wasting away the time God has allotted me on this earth. I was silently agreeing with the woman in front of me in line, who was loudly commenting on the ridiculousness of the fact that Best Buy only saw fit to staff its checkout counter with one employee during the holidays at lunch time. I busied myself looking at the magazines next to the checkout (the sheer number of magazines makes for an outrageous number of headlines screaming out at you. And I don't even listen to country music, but the picture on the People Magazine "Country Special" issue with Brad Paisley, his wife Kimberly Williams, and their baby son Huck was frickin' adorable. That child is the cutest child I have ever seen with a cowboy hat on. Look:

Told ya!) for a while, and then I zeroed my attention in on the checkout girl. Keep in mind that I am friendly. I found myself getting irritated as I stood there because the girl was smiling at each customer in what I considered to be an excessive fashion. She just kept smiling away, chatting with people as they bought the latest technological gizmos, telling the woman in front of me what scent her lotion was, and commenting on how much she loved the cherry blossom scent. I began to have an internal conversation with myself about how I was not allowed to get annoyed by someone smiling TOO MUCH when my main complaint with New York City was that when I smiled at people, no one would smile back. And then the evil person that lives inside of me started rambling about how no one could possibly smile that much, and certainly she didn't mean it, and the fact that she was smiling at other employees as they passed meant that she was not really focusing on her job, and she was distracted from the VERY IMPORTANT task of getting me out of that Best Buy store.

By the time I got up to the checkout counter, I was brusque and to the point, and the poor friendly checkout girl probably thought I was rude and unfriendly. I really am friendly, the good person inside of me wanted to tell her, and leave her with a smile. The bad person inside of me wanted to ask her if she thought it was appropriate to be having that much fun at work. I settled on paying my bill, smiling briefly and saying, "Have a great day." It's all I can be expected to do, really. This is why I shop online.