Sunday, July 16, 2006

card

I was at the supermarket. The pretty-but-not-intimidiatingly-so woman in front of me in line was using the cardreader to pay her bill. The male cashier--short, unattractive-but-in-an-amiable-way, with a voice that sounds a little bit like Costello from Abbott & Costello--decides to embark on some joshing checkout flirtation:
"If you use it as an ATM, we have a limit of $100,000 on withdrawls."
"Well, you won't have to worry about me doing that."
Pause, and then: "You know what I would do if I had that kind of money?"
"What?"
"I would get one of those credit cards that give you the airplane miles."
"Mm hmm."
"If you had that kind of money and used one of those all the time, I bet you could probably get three or four trips a year."
I wondered if she would make the obvious point, and I could have fallen in love with her on the spot if the cashier hadn't already claimed man-dibs, because she did: "But couldn't you just pay for the trips yourself then?"
Which flummoxed him for only a couple seconds. "Yeah, but this way you'd get them for free."

14 comments:

Ang said...

I don't understand what makes that response appealing. This is why I'm extremely single, I'll bet.

dorotha said...

i'm with ang. sounds like you just thought she was pretty. maybe you needed some kind of excuse to find her attractive other than her looks. i'm just saying.

Anonymous said...

That's all it takes for you to fall in love? I'm with the previous commenters on this one. It seems to me that that one was the more obvious response. A witty response would've put some kind of twist on that obvious response.

Ann Althouse said...

And then Jeremy had the perfect response to witnessing a pretty woman who had the perfect response: He came home and blogged about it.

dorotha said...

yes, he is a man of action and not words.

dorotha said...

and, by the way, my god how i hate pretty.

Ann Althouse said...

Speaking of pretty, I'd bet anything that if the cashier had been sexually attractive -- the woman would have laughed at his jokes.

jeremy said...

Ann: Of course she would have laughed had he been more attractive.

Rest: The prettiness is not really relevant to the story. I was just so happy that she gave him the correct straight line for his inadvertently-funny-punch-line. Lesser mortals either would not have been paying enough attention or would not have bothered.

Ang said...

I don't understand what made his punchline funny either, inadvertent or not. I guess I'm oh-for-two.

jeremy said...

Okay, okay, so it wasn't my most well-done post. Which is unfortunate, because it was a genuinely amusing/poignant conversation (at least for me) to watch. I wish I was better at writing description, because the guy was just ugly-quirky and then his whole thing was about how if he had a bunch of money he would get a credit card with frequent flier miles. I didn't really mean for it to be much about the woman at all.

Anonymous said...

The post seems to be more about the woman, about her supposedly witty comeback, and how much you liked that. But the more I think about it, the more I feel like it was actually a pretty dull response. It was the really obvious response. The interesting response would've taken it to another level, or would've smiled at the guy and acknowledged that lots of frequent flyer miles would be great.

jeremy said...

Yes, well, I suppose my ideal woman would have said something like "You know what I'd do if I was rich, I'd get one of those credit cards that gives you cash back with every purchase," but that's too much to hope for in the express lane at this supermarket.

Anonymous said...

And what are these "man dibs"?

Anonymous said...

Yay, Jeremy, that's a good response there. See, now you know - if you haven't yet - that YOU have the qualities you desire for falling in love. And since being happy with ourselves (is that too much of a leap?) is an important part of all this big picture love stuff, this is overall a good thing.