Manners battle

[firstfrost]

This morning, I was standing on the T, when a guy talking to his girlfriend decided to drop his newspaper (one of the little free Boston Metros, not a complicated heavy one) on the floor. After a few minutes of being vaguely irritated at him, I picked it up and handed it to him. "I think you dropped this, sir?" He gave me a dirty look, and took it. Then a few minutes later, he dropped it again. I picked it up for him again.

"Sir, you seem to be having some trouble with your paper."
"I dropped it, I'm sorry."
"I know. Here you go. There are trash cans in all the stations outside the train."
"Well, I'll throw it out there, then."
"Good."
"But until then, I'll leave it on the floor."

At this point, his girlfriend took the paper. I'm honestly not sure where I would have gone from there. Most people who I hand their trash to have the decency to be a little embarassed and throw it away later. And most people have the instinct to take something that's been handed to them, but he had clearly overcome his instinct by the second time.

I wonder if he talked her into dropping it on the floor again once I had gotten off the train.

Comments

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

I wonder if he talked her into dropping it on the floor again once I had gotten off the train.

Were I the author of this story, this would be a revelation to the girlfriend that she is with a selfish git. She tells him off at the next stop, a scene which is noticed by a much nicer boy, who then asks her out for fair trade coffee which is served in reusable cups.

But seriously, props to you for calling out a litterer.

[arcanology.livejournal.com]

Later nice boy turns out to be either a serial killer or a vampire, depending on what kind of movie this is.

[algorithmancy.livejournal.com]

Or else he's the kinda goofy Seth Rogen-ish guy she had previously spurned.

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

shumashi should write stories about all of our interactions with idiots! I like this.

[izmirian.livejournal.com]

I do really wish we had the full back story on this person in later chapters. It's intriguing that he spent two lines apologizing before completely undoing his apology. Was he setting up for the "I'll leave it on the floor" line the whole time or does it reveal a tragic inner conflict.

[bemused-leftist.livejournal.com]

Maybe the dropping, the accepting, the apologizing, and the dropping again were all reflexive.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

I do think the apologizing was reflexive - that's why the whole "I think you dropped this" trick works at all, because there's a standard polite protocol you follow. Sure, his apologies were totally insincere - but I was being insincere too, I didn't really think he had accidentally dropped an important belonging and would be grateful to get it handed back.

As an interaction, it's kind of interesting, in that neither of us was saying anything at all sincere, and both of us knew that. About all the content that was exchanged was something like

Me: I'm going to keep bugging you about this. Pester pester.
Him: You know, I'm not sure I care.
Girlfriend: Maybe I do care. Here' I've done the thing, you can go away again.

[kirisutogomen.livejournal.com]

That's a horribly unrealistic story.

In a more realistic version, the girlfriend grew up in a home with a narcissistic jerk of a father, and while she's occasionally tried dating nice guys, she never really feels a connection with them. The selfish git, though, constantly undermines her self-confidence and she works like hell to try to gain his approval, but it seems like it's always just out of reach. When they get back to their apartment he screams at her for twenty minutes for making him look bad in public. He never hits her. She cries, and eventually has sex with him to try to placate him.

He breaks up with her every month or two and she calls him desperately begging him to take her back. Eventually they get married and have three kids and he cheats on her frequently. The marriage is loveless but she keeps trying to make it work for fifty years. Their kids grow up to be just like her.

The much nicer boy who never got a chance with her actually has a touch of Asperger's and always comes off as slightly creepy to girls, so has never managed to actually date anyone. He ends up in a dead-end job as an administrative assistant at an insurance company, and spends his evenings alone in his apartment reading Civil War history books.

Also, free trade coffee is bullshit.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't read those stories. :)

[kirisutogomen.livejournal.com]

Me neither, but somehow I hear them all the time nevertheless.