(via eatmypussy)
The fluorescent light casts the washroom in a sickly, unnatural glow. While taking a break from my work as a cashier in front of the mirror, checking on my fitness, I notice an old man finishing up at a urinal. As he backs away, he doesn’t wash his hands, simply going from holding his old man dick to walking directly outside. I shudder at the lack of hygiene as he exits.
Six or seven minutes later, back at my till, I’m bereft of any customers and vulnerable, when I see none other than Dirty Man, hovering slowly around the end of the checkout aisles, picking up a pack of batteries here, a chocolate bar there. I work in a large department ‘superstore’. There are many aisles. But a particularly interesting candy happens to be at the end of my own, and before I can leave to busy myself with arranging shopping carts or returning abandoned items, he is making his slow, dirty way toward me, eyes fixed.
It is at this point that I begin to weigh my chances of leaving this encounter dick-contact-free. Most old people don’t want to carry bills and coins as they’re prone to be misplaced, instead opting to pay with their debit cards, or in their decades-abandoned vernacular, their ‘Interac’. I bag his items and gaze at him intently, anxious and anticipating. His hand slowly emerges from his pocket, a plastic card clutched in it. A debit card. I exhale an audible sigh of relief and wait for him to approach the self-serve debit machine.
But he remains.
Unmoving.
Silently, he extends his arm toward me and motions downward with his eyes. In the corner of the card, weathered and worn yet sharp as the ice pick currently being driven through my chest, the memorable logo. Those vile navy and goldenrod stripes, and the four letters that seal my fate.
(VISA)
I gingerly grasp his credit card, flinging it into the machine and making the barest of contact while giving it back to him with the receipt. I pray for a last moment of redemption, that he forgets what is supposed to come next and leaves with his purchase. But he is wily. He will not be fooled. And so, defeated, I offer my pen to obtain his signature. My only pen. He snatches it, mashing it into his palm. I can picture everything he just touched in the washroom being transferred onto the surface of it. He hovers back and forth over the receipt, unsure of where to sign. “THERE, THERE, THERE, THERE,” I silently scream as I point at the signature line.
His slow, meandering cursive loops and lolls across the page.
It is finished. I inhale sharply as I hold my tainted pen, the man gathering his items as I stare at the ugly, pallid fluorescent lights overhead.
I look down to leave, to escape to the safe sterile haven of antibacterial handwash. But the sight that greets me roots me to the spot.
Customers. Several customers with several dozens of items, each its own anchor weighing me to prison.
“I can help who’s next in line.”
and the mountains trembled, and the birds shrieked, and exaltations carried across oceans as ipad nabisco waters-morris was begotten unto the world
good to know everyone will feel better by blaming one guy, but IT’S TOO BAD THE LEGAL SYSTEM IS UNABLE TO CHARGE THE POPULATION OF NORTH AMERICA FOR SOMEONE’S DOWNFALL/DEATH, EH?
‘amazingly remarkable’
