Tire Woes

While running errands this morning, I was distraught to find one of my rear tires totally flat. I'd been having trouble with the tire for weeks, and I was planning on bringing it in anyways, so today was as good as any. Fortunately for me, I had a good book on me and was ready to sit down and hang for awhile, smelling the wonderful rubber at Town Fair Tire.

It's fascinating to watch the different type of people who wait for the work to be done on the car. Rationally, it will take at least an hour to do any type of work on your car, so you may as well settle in. Some people, however, don't seem to be as comfortable chilling out and waiting.

Of course, I'm speaking of the person who gets up every five minutes for a status check, as if the folks at TFT don't have anything better to do. This person wanders around, walking beneath the tire stacks, a look of complete helplessness lingering on his or her face. I secretly wish a tire stack would fall, but only to scare them into submission. Wishing people harm is never a good thing.

Then there was the person who needed to sit uncomfortably close to me despite the fact that there was a dearth of chairs. Somehow he or she managed to sit in the chair so as to maximize the invasion of my personal space. This person snapped their gum loudly, sighing every couple of minutes and getting up to walk outside. That was a lot of fun for me.

The loud talker is the person who talks on the phone, complaining to everyone he or she knows how ridiculously long it takes to get a tire fixed. I feel bad for the person on the other end who has to listen to this. We all know how long it takes, you don't need to remind us.

Of course, there's the rest of us who have accepted our fate. I'm reading a book, happy as couldbe, while the person across from me seems quite content to watch the gameshow. We are those stolid soldiers who know how to deal with this averse situation. Just grin and pretend like it's all good. You'll be back to your normal life very soon.