How to be Dumb

It's been a good thing I've been kooped up in the office most of my waking hours this week, because any contact I've had with the general public has been a frustrating mess. Case in point, yesterday:

I had three things to do during lunch: Pick up a proof at TU, stop by the house and grab a bite to eat, and go pay my rent.

Classes are back in session at TU, and apparently enrollment has far surpassed the number of available parking spaces. I cruised around for ten minutes and there wasn't a space for a mile radius of the building i needed to go to. So, I pulled up to the entrance, put on my hazard lights and picked up the proof. A minute and a half, tops. When I came out, Campus Security was taking down my tag number. I went to move my car and the rent-a-cop rolled down his window and sternly told me, "That's not a parking space."

"Okay. If you can find one for me anywhere near here, that'd be great." Good thing he rolled up his window before I continued, "Now, aren't you overdue for a fresh rack at the Krispy Kreme?"

I head home and heat up a can of soup. I mess with Chuck for a few minutes, then head out to pay my rent. But first, I needed to stop by an ATM and get a money order. At QuikTrip, the lady in line in front of me at the cash machine swipes her card, punches her code, and tries to take out forty bucks. I know she's going for forty, because she's mumbling everything she's punching in, like this event requires narration. She's shocked at the message "Insufficient funds for this transaction".

So, she tries again, this time for thirty. Same result. Twenty, same. Ten, ditto. Then, it hits her to try checking her balance. "Aw, I'm overdrawn!" No shit. She steps aside, wondering what she's gonna do. I get my cash in less than a minute and I leave.

I was at my landlord's door when it opened, but there were a couple rednecks waiting there before me. Had I known they were gonna spend the next thirty minutes arguing with the landlord over why they can't have their own locks on the door (because that's in the lease, dumbass) and why they need to give them their utility account numbers (also in the lease) and why this is so complicated (because from the looks of it, basic math would give you a migraine). I was surprised they didn't try to negotiate payment with squirrel pelts.

They step away from the counter to each man a cell phone and track down their account numbers. I step in and pay my rent and request a receipt. One of the guys shoots me a bad look and gives me a "Hey!"

I look back at him and say, "I've waited thirty minutes on you dipshits to make a thirty second transaction. Excuse the fuck out of me for having my shit together. Enjoy the next NASCAR event."

All that in a little over an hour. Here's a quick list of all the other dumb things I've encountered this week.

- The thug wannabe at the smoke shop paying for watermelon-flavored blunt rolls with nickels and pennies. As much as I loathe sterotypes, it's another thing to live up to them. I felt ashamed that my first thought after seing this was, "Now, if only I can find some grape malt liquor."

- The guy at Arnie's last night with the portable DVD player asking me and my friends for spare change. I have one rule: Never give money to people with cooler shit than me.

- This girl at work telling us about her dislike for the new Spicy Southwest Breakfast Burrito at Sonic. "I should have ordered it without the jalapenos and that sauce. It was just too spicy."

- And the client whose project I've been busting my ass on, which I'm only half-way done with, and I'm supposed to get him a proof on Monday (Labor Day), asks me if I'm doing anything this weekend.

- I did a poster for this charity benefit for the former owner of Arnie's, who's in the hospital right now. Last night, one of the musicians told me he wouldn't have been involved in it if he had known the guy's name was gonna be on the poster (the guy isn't exactly all that well-liked). Gee, you can't have a benefit without telling people who or what the benefit is for. You can't just NOT call it a benefit, because you risk losing out on money from people that may actually give a rat's ass about the guy.