How Freaky Is Your Cashier or Waitress?

Hermione and I have had a long-running hobby of ascribing various levels of sexual deviancy (or lack thereof) to the various clerks, cashiers, waitresses and whatnots we encounter. Tonight, while leaving Blockbuster, she asked, "What do you think he does for kicks?" After about .47 seconds of thought, I replied, "Goes home and watches alien tentacle porn. That hentai anime stuff that makes Godzilla want to keep stomping the place." She agreed with my astute judgment.

If a girl seems quiet and reserved, "She's never had an orgasm." or "She's totally wild. She's into stuff that's illegal in Muslim cultures or states south of Ohio." Guys get it just as bad, too. "Dude drives a black-and-gold Trans Am." or the now-classic description I had for a poet who was freaking out the audience with his creepy, misogynistic orations, "Why am I getting the image of several meat freezers in his basement filled with the bodies of missing prostitutes?"

Is this making rash personal judgments about people based on the most superficial criterion; judging a book by its cover in the most shallow way? Hell, yes it is!!! Duh!!! It's not like we're denying them a mortgage or slashing their tires or anything actually harmful. Heck, they're probably doing the exact same thing about us! "That poor girl. How can she stand that asshole?" or "He's hot. I ought to knife that bitch and show him what real poonannie is like. Ya feel me?"

If you don't do so already - yeah, right, you don't - take more than a cursory glance at your service industry worker and take a guess as to what they're like when they take off that name tag and uniform. Try and imagine what they're like off the clock and on the town. As mean-spirited as this activity may seem, it actually makes you take more notice of those folks whom we take for granted every day. Perhaps that janitor cleaning the bathroom is an excellent salsa dancer. It's SOP to ignore people beneath our station - or what we think our lofty station is - so by being "mean", we can actually be kinder than those who think service people's only purpose is to serve us.