Aunty Acid by Ged Backland for February 05, 2025

Get Lost!

Customer: “Can you give me directions to [Another store I’ve never been to or shopped at]?”

Me: “Yeah, I know that’s in our shopping plaza, although I don’t know exactly where. I’d be happy to pull up a map on my phone for you!”

Customer: “I’d prefer if you just remember.”

Me: “I’d prefer it if you did too.”

Customer: “You can’t talk to me that way!”

Me: “Sir, I have no obligation to help you with anything outside of this store. I was going to look up the directions to be nice. Now the only directions I am giving you are towards our exit.”

Customer: “F*** you!” Storms off.

Coworker: “I would have given him wrong directions on purpose…”

That Comeback Wasn’t Lost In Trans-lation

I worked in the freezer department of a food service store. While I’m asthmatic, the occasional walk to and from work felt good in the Floridian winter and didn’t cause me too many breathing troubles, so when my girlfriend needed the car, I walked to and from work.

That is until my trans coworker caught me walking home one evening as the sun was setting. She pulled over and, with no pleasantries, demanded:

Coworker: “Get in.”

Trusting her as I did, I complied and explained just how short a journey it was.

Coworker: “I used to walk just the other way the same distance. But we had a creep in the store. He found me walking home and offered to ‘give a ride for a ride’ to save me from walking.”

I couldn’t contain myself and asked:

Me: “Please, tell me you pepper-sprayed this guy?”

Coworker: Laughing “I’m trans, remember? I put on my best baritone and said, ‘That’s the best offer I’ve heard all week!’, and that led him to speed off. Never saw him again… But yeah, I don’t let coworkers walk home anymore.”

Many would agree.

Never fly with a female pilot!

Aunty system of direction has become un-coordinated. Of course we always have known that she is ‘off the grid’.

I work in left and right too, not south, north, east, west. I’ve read that for some reason men work in the latter and women work in the former but I’m not sure how true that is.

Whatever is left must be right!

Take a right a few blocks down where the Kresge store used to be.

If Aunty Acid was a pirate, many of us would have walked the plank.

Well Aunty, you got the idiot part right.

My friend’s family owned a bar on the two-lane highway outside of a small town. A lot of people came in and asked for directions to other smaller towns in the area. When they did her dad would pause and then shake his head and say “[name of town?] You can’t get there from here.”

I work on landmarks. “You go down the block until you get to the purple house …”

……or live in Western USA!!!!

..left/right will just get you lost because it is dependent on which way you are facing and requires not missing one single direction along the way..

Just Google it.

Then there was my father, who would always give me directions starting from his own house instead of mine.

Well, we all know that north and east are arbitrary directions, as are left and right. I once had a customer ask me to tell the driver to turn left at the third road after the big live oak and he wanted the delivery at 4AM.

Well, I lived in Rural Alaska and worked with UPS ….so take a left at the big purple rock keep on the gravel road till you get to Martin Clark’s apartment….. I was surprised by the workload

The only time I knew NSEW directions was when we lived in San Diego. I always seemed to know where the ocean was and that was west…..believe it or not, I could figure out the rest from there.

Growing up in the old country my grandma lived with us while my mom was working in the US, she was a headstrong woman and one day while my brother and I were in school, she had the brick fence painted “Old Rose” which to those among you who are not into paint colors meant Pink. So when anyone asked for directions to our house they say… left at the corner and you can’t miss it, it is the only one with the pink fence, of course a week later she had the house painted the same color so the directions just say left at the corner and it’s the pink house. You don’t even have to say which side of the street, pink, can’t miss it.

Getting old?

Go to the corner where the sign shop used to be. Head to the alley just after the busker with the out of tune violin. There should be a shop that sell out of date newspapers that has someone who might be able to help you.

DC streets are NS or EW. Numbered streets go NS and lettered or alphabetically named in accordance with the alphabet go EW. State named go diagonally. Don’t forget to add NW, NE, SW, or SE to the combo. Each city quadrant has the same names with different quadrants. It is actually easy to navigate.

Cue an early Elvis classic: ♪ “You’re Right, I’m Left, She’s Gone” ♪ .

You got left right behind didn’t you?