Picking up a Saturday night pizza and salad. A scrawny, pale Boomer with straight hair half way down his back and an earring materializes next to me. I have no doubt I could take him, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

He’s looking at individual slices. A 20 year-old Evergreen State College student making $15/hour asks him if he’s been helped.

I don’t know if I write well enough to capture the depth of his cruelty.

“Have I been helped? Would I like anything?! No, I’m just standing here looking at the pizza because I don’t know, maybe I want pizza.”

I’m dumbstruck, but she keeps it completely together and explains what the slices are. He says something about being vegan.

I wish my peabrain engaged more quickly. It wasn’t until I was in the car that I realized what I should have said/done.

Asked him, “Were you born a dickhead or is it a more recent development?”

There are two types of jobs. Those where you have to deal with the public and those where you don’t. A young woman at the Westside Vic’s deserves a “public dickhead” bonus.

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