Aunty Acid by Ged Backland for August 30, 2024

Food Trash For Thought

I am with a friend and some others in their car, eating some food in the parking lot of a fast-food place. We’re not too far from the drive-thru, and they have an employee standing outside with an iPad getting customer’s orders ahead of reaching the speakers since they’re so busy and they need to move things along.

One of the friends of a friend suddenly empties the car’s ashtray and garbage onto the parking lot floor.

Me: “Hey! Pick that back up!”

Guy: “Nah, they pay people to do that; I’m doing them a favor.”

Me: “No, they pay people like me to bus tables and wash dishes and when some idiot like you comes by and trashes the place, I have to stop doing those jobs to clean up after them.”

As if on cue, we see the employee that was standing by the drive-thru walk over with a broom and dustpan and start sweeping this guy’s trash into it. The employee is so remarkably used to doing this that they’re able to do so without breaking eye contact with the guy.

Guy: Sheepish. “…sorry.”

The employee looks at me, gives me a head nod as if acknowledging our shared suffering of working fast food, and goes back to what they were doing. The friend of my friend was noticeably quiet for the rest of the time we all enjoyed our food.

But Can They See The Irony?

Many years back, I wandered into the office just as one of the secretaries was checking off each item in the recently received stationery delivery.

Secretary: “Envelopes, yes. Pens, yes. Paper, yes. Two rolls of invisible mending tape— I can’t see that.” Pauses “Why are you laughing?”

The Price Is Right, The Customer Is Not

A customer snaps his fingers in my direction.

Customer: “You! My wife sent me here to get something I don’t remember what it was, but it was like thirty or forty dollars, what is it?”

Me: “Um, sir, we have lots of things in that price range, I’m gonna need a little more info to go off of.”

Customer: “Ugh, fine! I guess I’ll just go ask my wife then; a lot of help you are!”

He comes back with a $33 item muttering about how everything needs to be a different price.

c’est la vie

CONTENT WARNING: Death

Driving His Job To An Early Grave

My dad is a mortician at a large mortuary and cemetery. As you might expect, the cemetery’s operations are done with care, respect, and dignity toward deceased loved ones as a top priority. The cemetery employs a few transport drivers who collect the bodies from hospitals and other places and drive them back to the cemetery to be embalmed and/or cremated.

One such driver decided to take a selfie in his vehicle with someone’s recently deceased grandmother in the back and post it to social media with the caption, “Still gotta haul this dead b**** to the cemetery.”

He was already fired by the time he made it back.

Blind Them With Science!

Customer: “Are these rolls fresh?”

Me: “They were baked a few hours ago.”

Customer: “I want fresh ones!”

Me: “These are pretty fresh, but if you want fresh out of the oven the next batch will be ready in about twenty minutes.”

Customer: “Twenty minutes! That’s ridiculous!”

Me: “I’m sorry, but that’s how long it will be.”

Customer: “That’s terrible service! Why should I have to wait that long?”

Me: “Well the dough in the oven is waiting for the starch to transform, and when the surface reaches 265°F those amazing Maillard reactions will start to occur, all those sugars chemically reacting with the amino acids and other protein fragments to produce—”

Customer: “—fine! Fine! I’ll come back in twenty minutes!”

Me: “Excellent! The Saccharomyces cerevisiae should be dead by then!”

Customer: Blinks, and leaves.

It’s hardly fair.

I know, and that sucks!

When I was a kid, there was an elderly couple across the street. We used to play kickball in the street and, as you would expect, the ball would get kicked into their front yard. Oh! They got SO mad that we’d be running all over their grass to retrieve the ball! And now? I’ve become them. “YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!!!”

She couldn’t see through your humor.

Most people and certain cicadas enter physical adulthood after about the same amount of time. They play their music loud and annoy their neighborhoods. Their hormones cause them to seek to mate. Adult cicadas no linger have the inclination and need to suck, however.

Luckily, people don’t breed like cicadas — but their period in adulthood lasts a lot longer. And some people make loud, irritating noise all the rest of their lives. They need to learn a degree of courtesy from cicadas and, if not dying after breeding — at least shut up.

Some in name only.

Aunty, let us know when you actually start adulting.

……oh the childhood memories!

For me, “Never trust anyone over 30” went out the window 40 years ago.

Some people are adults only by age – never by behavior. Emotionally Immature Childish Adult like Aunty.

We do not stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.

There is a big difference between being child-like and childish.

My wife claims that I never had a second childhood; I never got out of my first. She also states that I have no inner child; it’s all on the surface. I am proud to live up to both these statements.

Never.

Then you discover why being an adult sucks, all of a sudden you have to be responsible.

I’m old, the missus went shopping, I’m alone. Hey kid get off my lawn.

I failed Adulting 101. I’m only 10 according to my shoes.

Well, sure, Aunty, but of course I’m one of the ones who doesn’t.

“Hope I die before I get old.” The Who