Quit bitching, please.

You know, peeps, this morning I got an e-mail bitch from someone who had read an ad I had placed on a list, thinking, as had the person who passed it on to me, that it was legit, and then had forwarded the ad. She found that the ad was in fact a hoax (of which I am still not certain, because someone else e-mailed me about the ad saying not that it was a hoax, but that the problem being advertised had been solved quite a while ago.)

Regardless, the person who bitched at me, did so because she had been humiliated to have forwarded this ad to her coworkers and then learned it was bad information. First of all, if my coworkers ever harass me to the point of humiliation for making a fairly minor mistake- in the larger scheme of things- then I will probably quit my job because it will be clear that those coworkers are not folks with whom I cannot have a collegial relationship.

But, I apologized to this offended writer and offered to apologize myself to her coworkers for her passing on bad information. Really!

Then, I was just sitting here at the dining table in the Lodge of the Log Cabin Motel in Pinedale, Wyoming, where we are staying for the weekend and which I recommend highly, and a woman came to the front desk. The office is separated from the main lodge by a door, which is open because it is an absolutely gorgeous, clear, slightly breezy, balmy autumn evening. The woman came in with a thundering and only slightly veiled aggressive, "HELLO?" No one answered. The manager has been outside watering the mixed flowers hanging in pots from cabin rafters- nice.

Finally, I get up and go to the door and say, "She should be right around here. She has been out watering the flowers." Well, the woman disappeared out the door and came back soon enough, bellowing, "Have you seen her back here yet? How can a person get any help?!"

"I haven't seen her yet, no, but I know she is on the grounds."

"I just walked all around the grounds and didn't find her! I guess my cabin is the only one that doesn't need watering!"

I said, "I don't work here, so I can't help you. But I can give you a piece of paper if you want to leave her a note on the desk there." (I am trying to do homework. Now I have been distracted. But I don't mind offering some little token of assistance to someone who is obviously all worked up about something. Really!)

"He's already going out to get one. That won't help!"

You know what? Screw you. I have thought this a couple times today. And I felt sympathy for the young woman going about her business working here, for not having been in the office at the exact moment this woman wanted- something. Excuse me: needed help.

Honestly, peeps, there are some ways you can really piss off a pretty good-natured and accommodating person, and the first is to act like you are better or more deserving than that person, and even more so, by expecting that person, who is accommodating you, to go above and beyond the normal call of duty simply because you know you can rely on her to take care of you. Those people need some care, too, and all the more, for the shite they take on from insensitive, self-centered folks with exorbitant "needs."

Yes, I am bitching.

OK, now I am hearing the owner saying the people cannot stay here. The woman is going berzerk, and they have to leave. Good. Boot her ass out.