project 365 #261: sunrise under I 40

project 365 #261: sunrise under I 40
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

This is a post in which I expose to the world at large the total assholery of the employees of the Amoco on the corner of Haywood Road & Vermont Avenue. Yes, all of us who live in West Asheville already know that they are all assholes, but this is where I . . .um, tell y'all something you already know. Actually, it's kind of weird. It's like working at that convenience store just strangely morphs quite nice people into psychotic, raging assholes. I could completely understand it when they were playing that jingle, that horrible, horrible jingle, that is so horrible I have managed, thank gods, to completely forget it since its terrible inception of evil about a year and a half ago and then its atrocious apotheosis in the summer of 2006, when, apparently, all the convenience stores in Asheville had been taken over by one giant megaconglomerate convenience store which all played the same jingle - over and over and over again. Until you ran screaming away with an axe handle in your brain. So, yeah, I can get turning into an asshole if they're making you listen to that jingle all day long. Asshole, hell, I personally would have gone way beyond asshole and well into psychopathic serial killer - perhaps the first serial killer who concentrated exclusively on the personnel of Atlanta marketing offices.

But. They no longer play that jingle and the West Asheville Amoco has a much longer history of serious assholedom than that. I go to the West Asheville Amoco once a week to do my laundry. I've been doing this for about five years (I used to go to the place next to BurgerMeister, before there was a BurgerMeister, but the guy in there kept hitting on me and eventually, although his tales of being from the waaaaaaaahn country were charming, if complete bullshit, unless Spartanburg, unknown to me, suddenly became wine country, I got tired of it and had to split) and I have watched any number of WAA employees go from being human beings to beings that have left all human feeling, compassion and emotion well behind them. Except for the kind of cute sort of punk boy who was a manager there briefly and drove a truck with good bumper stickers and who I always had a sort of crush on - hey, if you're reading this, I'm still single.

Nevertheless. Tonight I was running late-ish at the laundromat and alternating laundry with beers across the street at the Westville, which is, let's face it, the main attraction of the WAA laundromat to me, and so I ran back in at about 8:15, just as my dryers were finishing, and piled all my laundry into baskets without folding and asked you, yes, you, curly headed asshole boy, to unlock the laundromat doors so I could carry my heavy baskets of clothing out.

Whereupon you unlocked the door ungraciously and stomped immediately away without, you fuck, opening the door for me, although it would actually have been less effort for you to do that than it was for you to avoid me and my gigantic basket while not opening the door. Nice. This is not the first time, curly headed asshole boy, that you and I have had a run in. A few weeks ago I got to the laundromat late, and when I went in for quarters (the convenience store/gas station and the laundromat, for those non Asheville readers, are all one building, with a connnecting door as well as their own doors) you threw a small tantrum and said angrily, "I guess this means you're just starting your laundry?" Yes. Yes, it did, and that would have been at 7:45 and, according to the woefully designed signs liberally placed about your laundromat, son, that would be 15 full minutes before the euphonically named Last Load.

Back off, kid. I am not to blame for your less than fortunate career choices. I have horrifying career choices of my own to brood over - viz., I am at the fucking laundromat once a week - and all you need to do is act like a human being. It isn't going to kill you. And if it's that bad working there, then quit, because, face it, you already have a job that is about the worst of the worst and it's something you will always be able to look back on and tell stories about that will make people go Ooooo, wow, that is horrible. So buck up. Quit being an asshole.

And, arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Avast, ye hearties! It was Talk Like a Pirate Day again and hey, yet again, I managed to not talk like a pirate pretty much at all.