Jesus. Effing. Christ. It's become clear to me that the more people you pack into one area, the higher chance you have of running into assholes--it's a simple matter of proportions, as the world is made up of a certain percentage of assholes.
So yesterday, when 1) the Cherry Blossom Festival was still going on, 2) the White House Easter thing was happening, 3) there was the opening game for the Nats at which President Obama threw the first pitch, 4) People were working because it was a Monday and 5) Lots of tourists were there because it was Easter Monday...the city was a disaster area, and it was the worst at evening rush hour.
Which is when one of the kids on my tour decided to get a flat on his rear wheel. Which I got to change (with the help of another tour member) right in the middle of the very crowded sidewalk on the way back from the Jefferson Memorial. The kid's tire went flat again (a slow leak?) on the 20-minute ride home, and I think that pissed the mother off, because she did not tip me. Even though I spent a solid 10 minutes getting yelled at by pedestrians and bicyclists while sweating my ass off and getting my hands coated in grease. Which would have been OK had either one of them bothered to say thank you.
Then there were the pedestrians who, on the morning tour, told me that we were a "pain in the ass" and bellyached about us stopping on the sidewalk (single file--they had room to walk, and they're shared pathways by law) because a kid fell off of his bike. I had to reel in my desire to call them a bunch of self-righteous douchebags. Instead, I bordered the line between polite and snarky in telling them that 1) it was a shared sidewalk, and 2) a kid fell off of his bike, and what would they like us to do, exactly? After we passed them, one of my group members informed me that they had tried to stand in her way. She accidentally hit one with the side of her handlebars. I told her they deserved it.
I love my job. I love my job. I love my job.
Also, as an aside, I would like to send a shout-out to Peter Barnes, FOX News' Senior Washington Correspondent. You now have a cherry pie, courtesy of Destination DC. Destination DC delivers like...7 gazillion cherry pies to people during the Cherry Blossom Festival. (Which I find amusing, because fruit-bearing cherry trees and the blossom-bearing cherry trees you see around DC are two different species.) I don't really know whay, but if I someday end up with a job where I have people delivering me free baked goods, I will make sure that I come down and thank them personally.
All of this cherry blossom hoopla really gets on my nerves...I hate the damn trees because they're JUST TREES, for god's sake (albeit pretty ones) and they drawn in hordes of obnoxious tourists. And there's an entire committee devoted to them and that damn festival, complete with a President, Vice President, and student "Cultural Ambassadors" who have to wear ugly and hot-looking pink blazers and do Lord only knows what during the festival. I've also seen cherry blossom flavoured soap and lotions and stuff...have you ever smelled a cherry blossom? THEY DON'T SMELL LIKE ANYTHING. Starbucks has cherry blossom donuts...but cherry blossoms don't taste like anything, either. And once again, they don't bear fruit...they're basically nature's equivalent of doilies. Pretty, but annoying, fragile and useless.
No comments:
Post a Comment