Wed, July 21, 2004

I accidentally miscalculated and left the office early for a haircut appointment, so rather than sit in the waiting area for 30 minutes with nothing to do but thumb through "Vogue" and do my best to avoid the reams of perfume advertisements, I stopped by Borders to kill some time. I know, I said I'd never go there again, but honestly – if my enthusiasm for activism were anywhere near that strong, you'd see me picketing the White House daily. In case it hasn't been made abundantly clear by now, I'm all talk.

Anyway, I was at Borders, hanging out, hating myself, and browsing overpriced DVDs. (Borders has a copy of Thumbtanic but no Jerry Maguire in sight. Win a Date with Tad Hamilton is thirty bucks. Their priorities are way out of whack.) I wasn't really planning to buy any books, I was just spending some time in the air conditioning someplace between the spot where I realized I had left too early (San Vicente and Fairfax) and the hair salon in Beverly Hills. I perused a couple of books – I didn't find the science section, which is usually someplace I can hang out for a while, but there's a new Carl Hiaasen. I really don't need a book, since I'm midway through J. Robert Lennon's Mailman right now, with James McManus's Positively Fifth Street on deck (thanks, Arksie) and plenty of others on the shelf that I haven't read. However, I found Penn Jillette's Sock on the shelf after missing it the first time, the same double-check serendipity I had with Max Barry's Jennifer Government once; the price seemed right, plus the book was fresh in my mind after reading a blurb review in "Entertainment Weekly", so I thought, why not?

This was the Borders on La Cienega, in which the cash register is placed sort of funny, so people occasionally line up in the wrong place. (In fact, the same could be said of the Santa Monica Borders, although they have a longer counter, so they've strategically placed some book tables and managed to corral their customers appropriately.) Anyway, I've been to this Borders a few times – they host free stand-up comedy on a bi-weekly basis – so I'm familiar with where the line is supposed to be, and I've also had a chance to watch as over the years the signs which indicate the proper place to queue up have grown larger and bolder and more adamant. When I approached the register, someone was checking out and there was a woman standing behind him in the wrong place. I got in line in the right place – noting, as I passed, the huge sign above this woman's head which said "line begins here" with a giant arrow pointing to the right place. As I did so, someone got in line behind me.

As the transaction at the register wrapped up, someone walked up behind the woman in the wrong place (I still couldn't tell if she was buying something, or just waiting to ask a question or validate parking or something) and you could see this new guy sort of equivocating. He rocked back on his heels a little, and glanced over at the correct line (now two people strong, versus one person in the wrong line). I think he looked up at the sign, too, but he may have felt like the woman in front of him knew something he didn't, so he hung with her. The customer at the register walked away.

Here, I paused. As you know from the parking saga, I'll often use a well timed pause to say, "Hey, I'm flexible here; whatever you want." This wrong woman had clearly been there before me. She had been wrong long before I was right. So, if the guy working the register wanted to be magnanimous and take her first, I was happy to allow it. (I wasn't sure where we'd draw the line. The guy who had just started being wrong behind her was neither ahead of me nor in the right line. At least the woman had one of these things going for her.) The cashier glanced back and forth for a moment, and then said, "The line actually starts over here, so you [gesturing at the two wrong people] are lined up in the wrong place. I'll help you [me] next."

So, I stepped up.

I felt it was pretty clear that I hadn't muscled my way in; I just followed the rules and somebody else (who was also following the rules) made me next. If there hadn't been anyone behind her, I might have insisted that the wrong woman go ahead of me (maybe, but I doubt it). If there hadn't been anyone behind her, the cashier probably would have helped her first. The guy behind her complicated things because he made it so that you couldn't just help the wrong people first and thereby help the people who had been waiting longer. If you accepted the wrong woman, it created a real potential for confusion once she had been helped. (As I said, I wasn't sure where we'd draw the line; the cashier likely wasn't either. I think this complication led him to follow the letter of the law and help me first.)

I stepped up, and the wrong line walked past us and got into place at the end of the right line. (Each of them now two places further back than they had thought they were; although, again, I suspect that the wrong guy was aware he was wrong, he was just playing his hand to see what happened, he had nothing to lose.) The cashier began ringing me up, and the wrong woman – who looked like a thinner, skankier Jennifer Coolidge – said, a little too loud, "Thanks for being a gentleman and letting me go first." I'm pretty sure this was directed at me, although the cashier and I both responded. I said something like, "Sometimes a giant sign is all I can do," and he interrupted me, saying, "Yeah, there's a big sign; I have to go with him." The rest of the checkout process took forever. I kind of wished that she would keep bitching about it, because I could certainly understand her argument, but I was also technically right. (It's kind of like in poker: when you get great cards, you hope someone else has good cards, too, so there will be a showdown. Otherwise, everyone folds to you and it's over.) I was ready to say something about how it's not my policy to subsidize ignorance, but she dropped it, so all I could do was buy my book and leave. I'm curious whether she took it up with the cashier again once she got to the front of the (right) line; I kind of doubt it, but it would have been fun if she had. By that point, I had killed all the time I needed to kill, so I needed to be on my way to the hair salon.

I think the argument can be made either way. (Obviously; I mean, I gave it the old "I'm flexible" pause and everything!) I'm not certain that I'd do it the same way next time, but I'm not sorry either. She was wrong, and it was pretty damn easy to find the sign and be right. Arksie has this argument about how he's for equal opportunities between the sexes, but that doesn't mean that we should pretend the sexes are equal. I kind of agree with that. I bring it up because she used the term "gentleman" in her rebuke, as though I should have given her special consideration. She wasn't stupid, she was a stupid woman. I don't think it helps the feminist cause for people to be saying, "Well, you're wrong, but I'll let it go because you're a girl." Anyway, I don't feel bad about it, but I enjoyed the experience a lot. Not because she was upset (although, that was sort of funny), but because it's the kind of thing I love deconstructing after the fact, like the concession stand switcheroo at Fahrenheit 9/11. It reminds me of something you'd see in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm – awkward social interactions that aren't malicious in any way, but lend themselves to various nuanced interpretations. I enjoyed working the little calculations in my head as they happened. (I swear, everything I detailed above – as far as me considering how each element fit into the larger puzzle, vis a vis the wrong guy behind the wrong woman, etc. – really happened while I was standing there.) I guess we all do this; I've never talked to anyone about it specifically. It happens to me in traffic, or really in any interaction. Evaluating the options, figuring the probabilities, coming up with a course of action that would have been arrived at more easily through pure instinct, but my way has all sorts of evidence backing it up. It's a shame that, by the only standard I have to measure "success" at this sort of evaluation (poker), I'm not frequently very successful with it. This kind of thing is the reason I have this website. (Which is obvious, considering the reality TV recap and the I, Robot review are still "forthcoming," but I jumped at the opportunity to write this column within hours of the events described herein.)

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