After scarfing down my free concessions, I went to the commissary to get my product.
I didn’t know what the commissary was, or where. But I found a bunch of guys in red shirts standing around outside a closet door and asked them what was up. They were in line, they said, to get their product.
This line was not ordered by seniority, but regular old first-come, first-served. So I took my place in line and waited to enter the secret closet. It was not a fast line, and it took ten or fifteen minutes to find out what was behind the closed door.
Inside this unmarked door is a Cranky Troll-Woman and her Flunky. The Cranky Troll-Woman was consistently and completely unhappy, for reasons I could not identify. She wore a button with a picture of what must have been her grandson, which indicated to me that she had family. So her deep and unquenchable dissatisfaction with life, I figured, could not be due to a fear of dying alone. She was not disfigured or crippled and certainly wasn’t overworked, and honestly had no excuse for acting so much like a troll.
However, on my first day I tried to put myself in her Troll-Woman shoes. She had to deal with a bunch of untrained newbies who were, no doubt, taxing her patience and wasting her time. She probably wasn’t paid enough to take on the responsibility of shepherding all these fools into their new role at Dodger Stadium, and resented her superiors for putting her in this position. I thought I understood her situation completely, and decided to work extra hard to ask all the right questions and learn all the concession-selling techniques with outstanding alacrity. I congratulated myself on my depth of empathy and knew that before the end of the regular season I would kill the Troll-Woman with sunshiny kindness.
Or not.
I learned quickly. I never again came to a game without my own bank. I usually even brought my own quarters for change. I always decided ahead of time how much product I wanted to buy, and how much I would move at one time. At the end of the night, I counted my money with all the bills facing the same way. I broke down empty boxes, even those that weren’t mine. I always dumped out my dry ice before returning my cold bag. I never put my water bottle on her desk. I smiled at her Flunky. I was the most obsequious little twerp that the Dodger Stadium field level commissary had ever seen. All to no avail.
My empathy soon ran out. This is not a surprise. I am not the most patient of people. In fact, I have a tendency to get rather cranky myself. But this is almost always solved with the timely application of a cheeseburger (or beer). Why the Cranky Troll-Woman didn’t just eat a cheeseburger, which was available to us for free at the Carl’s Junior stand, was a mystery that utterly baffles me to this day. The fact that I had very recently been fed for free or expected to be very soon was the only thing that kept my own crankiness at bay and allowed me to persist with my sunniness.
Until one particular playoff game when several circumstances converged: there was a ridiculous line outside the commissary, I had a ticket for a free meal, and a postseason Red Sox game was on the television in the break room. I got my meal and watched the end of my game instead of getting in line for my daily dose of coworker abuse. If you can criticize me for this, you are a fascist.
When I got to the commissary after the end of the Red Sox game (they lost, I was not happy), there was no more line. I went into the Troll cave to buy my product, which forced the poor overworked Cranky Troll-Woman to put down her crossword and vociferate that I was the last seller to check in.
She demanded to know why. I told her that I had chosen to eat before getting my product. I knew better than to mention that I had also watched at least an inning of a game on TV. She bellowed that I should eat after checking in, and marked down on her sheet when I had arrived. I knew for a fact that I was well within the appropriate time frame to get my product and start selling, and rolled my eyes at her inanity. I spoke nothing but monosyllables for the rest of our transaction.
I finally had to admit that the Cranky Troll-Woman had killed my kindness, and not the other way around. Sometimes, friends, a Troll is just a Troll, and you definitely don’t bother putting on her Troll shoes a second time.
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