Work.

"Hey, this woman needs help over by the rock. Can you help her out?"

"Yea, sure."

Spring is here. I'm getting busy again with stone and rock. Now, however, I am not happy about it.

"So, I'm looking to build a pond... and they tell me, uh, that I should put stone around it. What kind of stone do I, ahh, use, to put around... it."

"Most folks use fieldstone."

"Which one is that? Is that, like, this stuff?"

She's pointing to moss rock, which is dense, dark stone that would make up God's fists if he had them. I don't want her to use moss rock for this pond, mostly because I have no desire to break my back picking it up out of the ragged wooden bin it lays in.

"No. That's moss rock. Fieldstone is over here."

She's gazing back at the moss rock, but I'm trying to move her towards the flatter, lighter rock. I notice she's also kind of cross-eyed, and it freaks me out because that's the second one I've had in three days like that. Never think that people in retail have your best interests at heart- unless you are a genuinely nice guy or a very hot woman, we will not go out of our way... or at least I won't.

As I'm talking and giving my whole bullshit thing about rocks and stones that I've perfected over the years, I suddenly get very depressed. I hate retail, and I'm tired of dealing with people and pretending like I care. What do I want to tell them? Something similar to....


- Do you realize how fucking smart I am? Do you understand that I have a motherwhoring college degree, and yet I am still inexplicably stuck at this shithole job working with a bunch of drunks, felons, and drug addicts? I can quote Shakespeare, Tennyson, T.S. Eliot, or Coledridge off the top of my head. Can you do that? Can you recite the fucking, "Out, out brief candle, life is but a walking shadow that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, then is heard no more" speech without thinking about it? Can you?

I'm tired of dealing with dumb dagos that I have to humor into thinking that they have half a fucking brain. I'm tired of telling jerkoffs how to lay a patio so they can ask me the same fucking question ten minutes later, or go to someone else and ask the same question and try to get a discount on some rocks.

Why the fuck am I still here? Why? Lady, I don't give two flying fucks what stone you want to use, and I don't care what the fuck happens to this pond. I've helped out a million shits with ponds, and all it's done is torn my fucking hands up and made crappy money. You think you're any different? You think I should go out of my way for you, so I can load up eight hundred pounds of stone and you can not tip me and I can hope you hit a fuckin telephone pole in some kind of karmic retribution? Not fucking likely.

"Yea. Use these rocks. They're flat and look natural.

"How much is a pallet?"

"Around $220."

"Oh, OK. I'll be back for them another time."

"Great."


I'll be waiting. With fucking bells on.