Wednesday, September 21, 2016

The young and the rested

I rarely see the usual people anymore.  Some of them have retired and gone away.  No Tyrannosaurus Elderex to be seen in this light of work, I suppose.  It was, thus, a young woman at the checkout counter.  Is it a good thing that she is working here? Is this her job or a career itself?

All those thoughts at the same time.  It is a wonder that I have not gone insane!

"How has your day been?" she asked as I placed the groceries on the belt.

"I'm tired" I said.

"Me too" she said almost right away.

"We go to work. We get tired. We get food. We go home to sleep" I replied.

"And we wake up to do that all over again" she immediately jumped in.  Nice repartee.  My kind of a small talk person.

"It is like in the movie Groundhog Day" I smiled.




She nodded her head.

"Have you seen the movie?"

"Oh yeah" she answered as she totaled up the amount.

I paid up. She handed me the receipt.

"We will do this again tomorrow" I said as I pointed a finger at her to remind her about the theme.

"Tomorrow's another day."  Damn, she is up to speed on movies and is quick on the draw.

This young woman is neatly replacing the older ones who have retired.  It is the story of life as we get old and yield to the younger ones.  It is a story that repeats--over, and over, and over, and ...


4 comments:

Anne in Salem said...

Clearly this young woman learned to put down her electronics and interact with real people. Bravo.

Sriram Khé said...

Yeah, good for her in not only having the people skills but also the content knowledge to engage in a meaningful chit-chat. There is hope.

Ramesh said...

If I ever come and live in your country, do I have to watch a gazillion movies before I come so that I can tank up for small talk ??

But wait. I can certainly ask whoever is manning the checkout counter whether he thinks Steph Curry is better than LBJ. I might be able to survive with that.

Sriram Khé said...

1. LBJ has been dead for decades and he was not a basketball player. muahahahahahaha ;)

2. "whoever is manning the checkout counter" ... good luck on that--it is mostly women at the counters. While chances are that they are way more into sports than I am, I bet you can't small-talk sports forever with them ...
More on the women/men aspects in the next post too ...