What do you do that is worthwhile?
It’s been a nice, but rather uneventful day where I’ve been left meandering along without much urgency (Despite the usual nonsense from ‘them upstairs’). I don’t know what triggered off this memory, but this particular little anecdote comes from a couple of years ago. To tell you the truth I’d forgotten about it as I’ve experienced so many of these mini confrontations in my job.
As I recall, I’d just booked a car on a ‘no loading’ restriction and was catching a tongue lashing from the driver (Excuse me, just who broke the law here?) As usual, his tirade turned into one of those ad hominem verbal attacks. Fortunately I was pretty kicked back on the day and feeling unwilling to tolerate the cascade of verbal crap being heaped upon my person, so I elected to do the old ‘rope a dope’ with my verbal assailant.
The booked party (An Audi driver, if memory serves me correctly) was harping on about how good he was at his job, and how crap I was for doing mine. All I could do was stand there and look into his eyes, all the time thinking “What a pillock” as he railed at me.
“You know what your problem is don’t you?” He stormed as I stayed silent. “You just like to demonstrate your power over people you dickless wonder!” Really? Mrs S will be disappointed by this sudden conjugal failure tonight. Like hell. “You really get off on it don’t you? You really enjoy the tiny ego trip of handing out parking tickets don’t you?” He was waving his hands about, but looked too much of a ranter to ‘kick off’, so I let him blather on without reaching for the panic button. “You tell me, right. You tell me, what you’ve done today that has any meaning. Anything that has done any good, eh, eh?”
I paused a moment, scratched my chin in thought before vouchsafing; “I don’t know sir, but I do seem to encourage some unusually spontaneous outbreaks of sudden honesty.”
With an “Argh” of frustration he abruptly returned to his vehicle and left with a screech of tyres. Which just goes to show that the only words worth having are the last ones.
As I recall, I’d just booked a car on a ‘no loading’ restriction and was catching a tongue lashing from the driver (Excuse me, just who broke the law here?) As usual, his tirade turned into one of those ad hominem verbal attacks. Fortunately I was pretty kicked back on the day and feeling unwilling to tolerate the cascade of verbal crap being heaped upon my person, so I elected to do the old ‘rope a dope’ with my verbal assailant.
The booked party (An Audi driver, if memory serves me correctly) was harping on about how good he was at his job, and how crap I was for doing mine. All I could do was stand there and look into his eyes, all the time thinking “What a pillock” as he railed at me.
“You know what your problem is don’t you?” He stormed as I stayed silent. “You just like to demonstrate your power over people you dickless wonder!” Really? Mrs S will be disappointed by this sudden conjugal failure tonight. Like hell. “You really get off on it don’t you? You really enjoy the tiny ego trip of handing out parking tickets don’t you?” He was waving his hands about, but looked too much of a ranter to ‘kick off’, so I let him blather on without reaching for the panic button. “You tell me, right. You tell me, what you’ve done today that has any meaning. Anything that has done any good, eh, eh?”
I paused a moment, scratched my chin in thought before vouchsafing; “I don’t know sir, but I do seem to encourage some unusually spontaneous outbreaks of sudden honesty.”
With an “Argh” of frustration he abruptly returned to his vehicle and left with a screech of tyres. Which just goes to show that the only words worth having are the last ones.
Labels: Smugness
1 Comments:
< applause >
Bravo, bravo!
Post a Comment
<< Home