1. One who has their head up their ass. Thus wearing their ass as a hat. Asshat.
2. A person, of either gender, whose behavior displays such ignorance/obnoxiousness that you would like to make them wear their own ass as a hat. 3. Describing when one's head is so far up one's ass that one is wearing the ass as a hat; in other words, extreme stupidity. Thank you, Urban Dictionary. For the record, my three favorite words, in order, are coochiesnorcher, asshat, and fucktard. Mostly because of how funny they sound, but also because they are so dead-on describing something, and by how much they make people cringe when I have to explain what they mean. Also for the record, my eighteen year-old daughter tells me there's a pattern she's found online for an asshat. She insists she wants to knit one for Christmas. Fast forward a week after my post "Is that a Towel..." and I see my assistant talking seriously to a fat man sitting on a motorized scooter. First of all, those things are plugged in near the front doors for a reason: if you're older and don't move around too well, or if you've been injured. This man was older, but by no means elderly, and he seemed quite healthy, aside from being well over two hundred seventy-five pounds on a one hundred and fifty pound frame. In other words, he didn't have to be on one of the scooters if not for the fact that he -- well, I'll try not to be too judgemental. Things looked pretty intense for a few seconds before the man abruptly motored away. "That," said Marie as she walked over to me, " was the sorry excuse that insulted Syeda last week." "I thought he said he was going to shop at Walmart from now on?" "That's what I said," Marie replied. "This time he asked another cashier when were we going to put Syeda back on a camel and send her ass home." She paused for a moment, choosing her words carefully. "I told him to never make a comment about one of my cashiers ever again, and that if he had any complaints, either keep them to himself or tell the store manager." It's frustrating, but this is what we do. We are a service industry, and we can't say what's really on our minds. We have to take the abuse, the invective, and the ass-holiness of some people and smile and give them great customer service right back, which only reenforces their belief that they are in the right and can keep right on doing what they're doing. Sometimes it's a minor thing: talking to us like we're stupid because we wear a name tag, or complaining we need to open another checkout lane because they're second in line and the person in front of them has three items left in the cart and it will take more time to sign into the register and move them over than it will for the cashier to finish with the first person. But it makes them watch us jump, and they feel better about their own pointless, petty lives. Sometimes it's more serious, like the man who used to come in and bait cashiers until they cried or got angry enough to lash out, then sneer at them and say "C'mon, say something. Try to hit me. I'll have you fired so quick you're head will spin." Well, that ended the day the second customer in line grabbed him by the arm and said: "Either shut up or I'll drag you outside, and I have a lot of witnesses here who'll say you took the first swing." But they don't always end well or satisfactorily. I'm not in the income bracket that allows me to entertain the thought that one day I might be able to retire. Put something away for retirement? How many of you out there really think you'll be able to afford to do anything other than work until you drop, then hope the insurance will cover whatever breaks next? But, one day, I'm going to stop caring about myself just enough to stick my neck out further than I should. And when that day comes, it's going to be an awesome thing to witness. I hope one of you is there to see it. | ||
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