i·me·michael

“It’s going to to cost you like a hundred and twenty dollars,” he said in this faded, unplaceable, european accent.

“WHAT?!”, I responded—shock and disbelief on my face.

I had been petting their free-roaming, friendly dog, waiting patiently behind other customers, and now it was my turn at the counter and I just wanted to have some flowers delivered. Nothing extravagant, just an average arrangement. I could have easily taken care of it online, but I decided to get out and support the locals for a change. Granted this wasn’t going to be a local delivery, but this is what florists do isn’t it?

“Ah, well, I have to wire it in, and there is a charge for that, and then the delivery charge, why don’t you just buy something here and take it over yourself?” he continued, stepping up his effort to talk me out of my plans.

“Because I’m not going there,” I offered up, starting to show my impatience. “That’s why I said delivered. But you’re telling me it’s going to cost me a hundred and twenty dollars to do that?”

“Well no, not that much really. More like sixty/sixty five.”

“You know what? Skip it. Thanks for your time.”

“No no no. Wait. Let me see what we can do. How much did you want to spend? Maybe forty/forty five for a nice arrangement?” he begins, and starts to write out the breakdown for me. The price of the arrangement, the wire fee, and the delivery fee. Totals up about sixty dollars. “And the tax on that would be…”

“About 4.80”, I said before he even grabbed his calculator.

“4.75”, he said, all done with his calculations. One of the other florists looked up and said, “Wow, you’re good with tax.” I just turned to her and smiled, hiding my disdain for even being there at that point. “You don’t even vaguely grasp the concept of math without a calculator, do you?” I thought. How hard was that to guesstimate? I decided to just get this overwith as quickly as possible and get out of there.

“It’s going to Cathy…”

“Kathy, that’s with a K right?”, he asks.

“No, Cathy with a C.” I countered, watching him try to turn his already started K into a C, and placing my pocket-warmed credit card on the counter.

“I prefer cash if you have it.”

“I’d prefer it if you’d just shut up and die already, how’s that?” was the scene as it played out in my head. “I don’t” is the reality of the words as they passed between my tightened, smiling, patient lips.

As we finished up, he thanked me for my business, mentioned I looked familiar, and wondered if I had been in before. I hadn’t. “Well I hope you’ll stop in again sometime”, he said with a smile. I still had the sound of tinkling bells ringing in my ears as the shop door closed behind me.

Never.

Later in the day the phone rang.

“Hello.”

“Whatsa matter, you forgot how to spell my name?!”, was the frst thing I heard, followed by a bit of chuckling.

Jackass.

And people wonder why someone would choose to shop online.