No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

I make it a point to be polite and patient in commercial encounters.  It makes life nicer for all of us and it costs nothing to be polite.  But sometimes my patience is tested, as it was at the post office earlier this week.  

I was at my usual post office and a bit disheartened to see that the postal worker at the counter was the disgruntled postmistress, a woman known to us all for her brusquely unhappy manner at work.  I was the only person in line and though I know she saw me, she was busy talking to a friend and showing him a video on her phone.  I waited patiently and when she called me up I was friendly.  When she realized I wasn’t going to be cranky over the delay, she was friendlier than she had ever been; genuinely nice.

As I left I commended myself for my patience and kind nature, concluding that being nice makes the world so much better for all of us.  I was smugly pleased with myself for being polite.

I should have known better.

My next stop was the local market, known to me as the vile Acme because I don’t really care for it.  But I needed a few things and vile Acme was a seemingly quick stop on the way home.  I grabbed the bread and fruit that had brought me to the store and then decided to treat myself to some deli cheese.  The deli counter was manned by a friendly but soft-spoken woman who was clearly inexperienced.  She managed to slice the cheese without losing a finger and then could not figure out how to price it.  She spoke to me all along but no matter how much I politely asked her to speak up, I couldn’t hear a thing she said.  Five long minutes later, I took my cheese (priced incorrectly, of course) to the check out line.

I was third in line, behind a woman with a full cart and a man buying two items but paying attention only to his phone.  Under the best of circumstances, these lines are slow.  This was not the best of circumstances.  Once the first customer was finally loaded up, I breathed a sigh of relief.  Two items could be quickly checked out, I thought.

I was wrong.  

While two-item phone man stared at his tiny screen, the clerk at my checkout turned to have an off-topic conversation with the clerk at the next checkout.  This lasted through several iterations while phone man continued to look at his phone and I waited on a slow simmer.

When it was finally my turn to check out, I was friendly and polite and just hopeful I could make my escape before Labor Day.  On the way to my car I drew the obvious conclusion: this entire mess was all my fault, the legacy of being so smug about being nice to the cranky post mistress.  

I won’t learn my lesson, of course, but not because I haven’t had the chance.