So, today I took my legally-blind, deaf in one ear mother out to do the weekly grocery shopping. Up one aisle and down the next all the way to the soap aisle where, amongst the small display of dishtowels, what should I find but one that had apparently been used to mop up one more doozy of a nosebleed?
It had been there long enough to get crusty, too. The towel was originally blue, but by the time I saw it it was covered in rusty, scabby streaks, as was the little cardboard placard it was attached to. The person who used it had had a lot of blood on their fingers too, you could tell because there were clear fingerprints on the cardboard.
My mother and I looked at each other and I asked her, "Is it a bad thing that this doesn't surprise me?"
"People are disgusting," she said. "It doesn't surprise me either."
I went and got the manager, who came to retrieve it with a plastic bag over his hand, assuring me as though he was afraid I'd pitch a fit and complain to corporate that it "might not be blood, but let's not take any chances."
I think it's a bad thing that that didn't surprise me either. I would bet you good money that there are plenty of people who, had they found a bloody dishtowel on display, hung there by some nasty asshole earlier, would have demanded freebies and raised holy hell. The word "unsanitary" would likely have been bandied about numerous times, along with such old favorites as "public safety," "discount," and "never shopping here again."
...Unless of course, to ease the trauma, coupons were involved.
It had been there long enough to get crusty, too. The towel was originally blue, but by the time I saw it it was covered in rusty, scabby streaks, as was the little cardboard placard it was attached to. The person who used it had had a lot of blood on their fingers too, you could tell because there were clear fingerprints on the cardboard.
My mother and I looked at each other and I asked her, "Is it a bad thing that this doesn't surprise me?"
"People are disgusting," she said. "It doesn't surprise me either."
I went and got the manager, who came to retrieve it with a plastic bag over his hand, assuring me as though he was afraid I'd pitch a fit and complain to corporate that it "might not be blood, but let's not take any chances."
I think it's a bad thing that that didn't surprise me either. I would bet you good money that there are plenty of people who, had they found a bloody dishtowel on display, hung there by some nasty asshole earlier, would have demanded freebies and raised holy hell. The word "unsanitary" would likely have been bandied about numerous times, along with such old favorites as "public safety," "discount," and "never shopping here again."
...Unless of course, to ease the trauma, coupons were involved.
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