[Note: I realize this is a first world problem: waiting a little ‘too long’ in a store to pay, or for a service that is rendered].
It is time to renew my passport, and I needed passport photos. (I had tried to snap & print them at home a previous time, but it’s not that easy.) So off to Walgreens two blocks from my house I went. A mom and her teenage son were being helped at the photo kiosk. The attendant had his back turned to me, and took so long at the ATM-style screen & photo printer that I pressed the button on the desk nonetheless, just to announce: ‘Hey, just so you know: you have another customer’.
Didn’t matter. By the time he had the teenager pose a fourth time in front of the white screen, a third person seeking passport photos had shown up. Two more people had been waiting a long while at the kiosk’s desk to pick up copies and photos. The copies had been made wrong, and the photographer says he will shred them and redo them ..
An aeon had passed and now it was my turn.
I march up to the white screen. Yank off my N95 mask. Give the camera a withering look. ‘Step forward’, is all the photographer offers —no ‘Thanks for your patience’ or ‘Relax a little’ or ‘Maybe fix your hair’. Snap. He looks at the photo on the printer’s screen, asks ‘Do you want to take a look and try another one?’. ‘NO!‘ I say. ‘Please print the picture and let me pay’.
Outside the store I kick at a piece of trash on the sidewalk. I knew I was scowling on the picture, and looking at it at home, proved me right. 🙂