Wait, why does he say this? Is he saying he’s working for his lunch? Working through “his lunch”?
I never walk on the bottom 1/2 of this street in Oakland (Craig, for those in the know) because there’s always a homeless guy harassing people. The restaurant must let him do it because he’s ALWAYS there.
Even more bizarre is that the CMU police station is literally 5 seconds away.
RedWood, that’s pretty awesome. Where are you by the way? If you did that in Pittsburgh the bus drivers would try to run you over, then blame you for his rash.
For a few years, my sensitivity to perfumes was so severe that I’d practically run through the entrances to mall department stores to avoid the perfume counter people. These days, it’s not so bad, but they all get the “I’m allergic” said in the sweetest voice with just a tinge of “don’t you fucking dare” added in. Most of them will back away like they were cooking bacon naked and the grease just splattered everywhere.
I had a guy do this when I was taking care of my mom while she was dying of cancer, and I let him know it. He bent over backwards to apologize as I walked away. Felt good, too.
In my first library job, we had a regular named Felicia* who was the most annoying patron who had not been banned yet. A God-fearing, bible-beating know-it-all who was also a pathological liar and a busybody**, Felicia always had more items on her account than she was supposed to and always had overdues. Always. Upon my first encounter with her, she remarked “Oh, you must be new” (only if “I’ve been there three months” counts) when I refused to renew her already overdue items in addition to checking out more stuff than she was allowed. She won no friendship with me that day, and became increasingly histrionic in her imaginary tales of woe as time went on.
Cut to about two years later, and I’ve not only gotten used to her craziness, but discovered that it holds no bounds***. I had recently dyed my hair a ridiculous shade of red, which she had not seen before; I’m shelving, and all of a sudden one of my coworkers comes around the corner and says “Oh god, Felicia’s here. Hide!” I go into my best “oh shit” mode and hide behind a shorter set of shelves, pretending to shelve in an area she was unlikely to pass by until the area is clear for me to escape. Half of the rest of the staff was actively avoiding her as well, so it’s not like I was the only coward that did not want to deal with her craziness. We had a lot of crazy, disruptive and odd folks wandering into our library, but none who caused as many troubles as Felicia.
*not her real name
**She would frequently accost fellow patrons and park her nose in their business so that she could give them advice, frequently of the “that’s a Satanic thing”, “that’s not Christian”, or “you’re wrong and I’m going to tell you what you should do” variety. This included picking a fight in the parking lot with another patron over something she had learned about, oh, five minutes beforehand while complaining about library services.
***She had pathological liar one-upped me one day when I finally had too many “why so sad?” comments and told her my mom had died a week before-- invented a sob story right on the spot just to have a worse “woe is me” story to share. I kid you not.
My sister is allergic to lanolin (more commonly thought of as a “wool allergy” - it’s the oily agent in wool that actually causes the allergy), which used to be in every damned lotion on the market but seems to not be as popular these days. She breaks out in hives from it. I shudder to think about what she would do to one of those mall kiosk workers who tries to grab a woman’s hand and slather lotion on it. :eek:
That’s me. Except I’m not a guy or a security guard and usually say it in a ‘Damn this week sucks but at least it’s not Monday’ type of way, rarely smiling. Sorry!
I’m a guy, and I get it sometimes (For whatever reason, I get kind of grim expression on my face when I’m thinking, even if I’m in a good mood). And I agree its annoying.
If I was the OP, the next time the guy said “Smile!,” I’d freeze in my tracks, look at him aghast, scrunch up my face with a quivering lip, and start crying. Then turn my back with Oscar-worthy sobs and shuffle back out the door. Once I was clear, I’d run around around the building and come in the back, but I’d make sure he didn’t see me the rest of the day, so he’d think I never came back.
You’ll have taken him by surprise, so he should be horrified. Plus, he’ll have to deal with all the people looking at him disdainfully as if to say “What did you DO to that poor woman??”
Edit: If he ever comes towards you to apologize, wince, scrunch up your face and walk away as if it pains you to even see him.
Regarding the question of whether guys get told to smile.
The hell it doesn’t. I don’t think a week goes by that I’m not told to smile by some random person, and I’m a guy. I’ve stopped going to several nearby restaurants because servers or cashiers would tell me to “smile!” or “cheer up!” every damn time I went in.
I was amused recently when a relative scanned and posted on Facebook a bunch of pictures of my mom from when she was a teenager and young adult (including being a young mom holding a brand-new me). Everyone commented that we had the exact same face (friends said it looked like me wearing a wig), and there were a few candid photos of her with what I’d call a neutral face… and everyone was commenting that she should have been smiling. :smack:
