SHE IS EVERYTHING I EVER NEEDED!

You have all seen her standing there. She’s usually about 5’4” tall, sometimes thin as a rail, and totally bored out of her mind. She is just 16 or 17 and has an ingrown hostility that she harbors for anyone not cool, AND over the age of 30.

She will hardly speak or write and the last time she smiled in public she was about 12 years old. I’m talking about that little girl behind the counter, the one who is supposed to take your order, the one that should greet you with a smile and act like she’s interested in helping you.

I go into a sandwich shop, look at the menu, unsure of what I want because of the many choices. There behind the counter stands Ms.Wanda Iwonderwhy, salesgirl and franchise representative, public relation’s best foot forward, what our public school tax dollars did, ready to take my order. Well almost ready. First, we need to get her attention. I look at her; she is looking at her cell phone hoping I will go away so she doesn’t have to work.

Ms. Iwonderwhy finally looks at me and says: “Yes?” She is void of facial expression.

I think, “Great, we are building a relationship!”

I say: “I’d like a Tuscan Sandwich.” she counters with both a long face and a question filled with the enthusiasm of a dead fish; “You want the roll or the ciabatta bread?”

“Ciabatta bread.”

“You want an old one or a new one?”

“Huh?? Uh a new one, I don’t like anything that is lying around for a few days.

She looks at me annoyed and says “THE OLD ONE IS THE WAY WE USED TO MAKE THE SANDWICH, YOU WANT THAT ONE OR THE NEW WAY?”

Suddenly our relationship is reaching a newer and higher plain, one of mutual misunderstanding.

“What’s the difference?”

“Well look at the ad on the wall and it tells you.”

That’s what I like in a relationship, honesty, and total disclosure.

“Give me the old way, the meat is probably fresher.”

Without another word, she walks away, looking bored, as she slinks toward the meat pile to assemble the sandwich. I watch her closely, making sure that she doesn’t spit in my sandwich.

I firmly believe that before Ms. Iwonderwhy leaves this Earth, she will have either become a traffic maid, work for the interrogation squad at al Qaida, or a prison guard at some women’s facility in an upstate New York jailhouse.