No Warranty

In her Latina accent, la enfermera tells me, “This is your fault! Not mine. It's your mistake.” She goes on about how incompetent I am for not including the sales tax in her estimated total. I can't remember the last time I had to grind my teeth so hard.

This woman infuriates and frustrates me. She's turned my decent day into sour. My cool begins slipping just as she decides to shut up.

“Alright 'mam. I apologize. I won't be back until I have the correct total. “

I grab the TV mount she's holding before I walk back to the home theater desk. Her bitching doesn't bother me. I get chewed out enough. But her words sting because I'm assuming she's a lot dumber than me . . . no taller than 5'4,” the woman's hair is tinged a shade of orange that I can't recognize (maybe it was Naca Tangerine) and the stud in her nose jets out of her right nostril, making it look like a metallic hair.

Even though she's wearing scrubs, I doubt she's a nurse. I'm going with clinical office assistant or whatever the politically correct term for medical receptionist is these days. Her snappiness suggests that she deals with dumbass patients all day, checking them in at an office on the Westside.

But as I contemplate this, my anger does not subside. I know I have two reasons for which I can be upset: despite her own position, she lacks empathy and sympathy that would allow her the patience in dealing with others (meaning she's a mean person), and the other is that I'm pretty sure I'm smarter than her. Yet, she speaks to me like I'm the idiot.

Still standing at the home theater desk, scenarios run a muck in my imagination. If only I could walk back up with a finger in her face and a grimace on mine saying, “'Mam, though I can hardly understand you, I take it that you're an unkind bitch who is stuck wherever you are because of the way you are.”Then I'd kick out the cane from under her father just to give'em an example of her attitude.

I would likely be dragged out soon after, sealing my physical resignation. I want to do that and I don't. More importantly, I understand why I can't. I just don't understand why I can't. What keeps me, us, anyone from doing what they want for the right reasons? Not telling that woman something, letting her walk away feeling as if she won, that would be injustice. Otherwise, she walks back into the world with nothing learned and ready to repeat.

Walk around and listen to those around you. Go ahead and eavesdrop. It's OK. You might find the lack of kindness which surrounds us to be infectious. Worst of all, we don't challenge that norm, leaving this poison to gradually release its toxins. The toxins spread, reaching more people, slowly seeping into their possible souls. This unkindness gradually changes a person. It gradually changes society and the way people perceive the world around them.

Of course, this takes decades if not centuries, but I'm not one to sit and let goodness decline.

Ultimately, I decide this is what bothers me the most about the way this customer speaks: she, at that moment, is the embodiment of collective cruelty and ignorance that many unknowingly perpetrate. She might as well be Pol Pot.

And as my eye catches the time, it hits 6:00 pm. My shift is over. I quietly clock out and start making my way towards the front of the store, taking the long way around so that the woman or her father doesn’t see me escaping the lashes of her tongue.

Racing towards the front doors, a young couple stops me near the DVDs. . . “Excuse me, where can I find Fox Force Five?”

“The TV show? Which season?”

“Season 2,” the girlfriend chimes in.

“Blu-ray or DVD?”

“VHS, dude.”

“You're kid-”

“Yeah, man. I am. DVD, please”

“Ah, well I'm off the clock, sir. Ask the gentleman right there.”

I point behind them and make my break as they groan. With a wave to the cute cashier, I cross the threshold from air-conditioned electronics into sun-broiled junkyard. I throw on my shades with the right and reach for my cigarettes with the left.

Already on my lower lip, I light the cigarette with my silver zippo and then untuck my shirt. Without ever looking behind me, I finally reach my car on the far-side of the parking lot.

A feeling of relief begins to spread throughout my body as I turn the ignition on. It begins in my chest, working its way outwards to my fingertips and toes. A smile breaks across my lips and I look towards the front entrance of the store and begin driving off. The woman and her father are walking out with the TV mount in hand. Even from across the tar mirage, I can see her sour face.

I made her visit unpleasant. I'm pleased.

My eyes keep on the pair as I haul ass towards the lot exit. And I turn my eyes back towards the front of the car. And It's too late.

Before I hear anything, red bursts across the windshield and leaves a branching crack. I swerve and brake. I can't see past the red. It's another 10 feet until the car is fully stopped and I step out in a frenzy.

Oh, God. Oh, God. Shit.

In a mangled mess, a girl lies across the blacktop with a puddle of blood forming around her. It's too late. Too late. A crowd is forming around her too.

A man grabs her body and hugs.

I fall to my knees with knots of hair in my hands, screaming uncontrollably. Even customers inside the store can hear me.

The lady with the orange hair sits in her car alongside her father and says, "that should be me screaming with how shitty they treat me."