today, I meet assholes

The chumps at the cell-phone store where I bought my Samsung Galaxy were downright rude to me the last time I visited them, about a month ago. They told me to come back to the store today to resolve my problem, which is that I want a reduction in my bandwidth service so that I'm not paying through the nose the way I currently am. (Perhaps I should have taken John from Daejeon's advice...) I had asked for 9GB in bandwidth, thinking that I'd be consuming tons of data through Net searches, email, and YouTube-watching. Not so: up to now, I haven't consumed more than 2GB of data within a single 30-day period. So I'm paying way too much for service I'm not using.

What about the rudeness? you fart testily. Yes, yes—I'm getting to that. When I went to see these idiots a month ago, I came with two problems. The bandwidth was one problem; the other problem was that I was periodically unable to access my own blog via the browsers on the phone (there are two browsers on my Samsung: a generic "internet" browser and Chrome). I would surf to my blog, and instead of seeing my raving self on the banner, I'd get a notification screen stating that my blog was unavailable to minors.* The guy helping me asked, chuckling, "I'm sorry, but how old are you, again?" At that point, one of his coworkers broke into monkey-like fits of laughter that he was unable to control, and he kept laughing the entire time. I was growing steadily more furious and was seriously contemplating breaking the fucker's arm, but I kept my self-control. The first guy, also trying to stifle his chuckles, told me that I'd need to surf over to the Naver portal, fiddle with the settings there, and all should be well. He also told me to come back to the store on January 3 (today) to take care of the bandwidth issue, since the adjustment would need to be timed with my billing cycle (why they couldn't have done a time-delayed adjustment, I have no idea).

I walked out of the store, seething, and imagining what I'd do if the monkey-laughter** happened again. Then it hit me: I'd film it! I'd put myself in the video's frame along with Laughing Boy, wrap my arm around his neck, and film us both laughing uncontrollably. I'd drool, I'd snort, I'd blow snot bubbles, and it'd all be on video. Slowly but surely, the guy would realize that I was having fun at his expense, and he'd stop laughing. I might even upload the video to YouTube, if Mr. Simian giggles tonight.

UPDATE, 7:55PM: There was no laughter, but the dude at the counter told me I needed to come back around lunchtime on Monday, because there was nothing he could do this late in the evening, and no change would take place over the weekend. Again, I have to wonder why a time-delayed change isn't possible.

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*Perhaps with some justification.

**There's a scene in the Sean Connery version of "The Name of the Rose" in which Connery's character, Brother William of Baskerville, a liberal-minded, Sherlock-like monk, debates with a venerable, conservative Dominican (Benedictine in the novel) friar named Jorge, who at one point speaks scathingly of people enjoying themselves, laughing like monkeys. "Monkeys do not laugh," Brother William points out. It may or may not be true that monkeys don't laugh, but when a guy's laughter sounds simian to me, I'll say he's laughing like a monkey. (Or maybe like a hyena, if he sounds sufficiently hyena-like.)

The exchange:

Jorge de Burgos: Laughter is a devilish wind which deforms the lineaments of the face and makes men look like monkeys.

William of Baskerville: Monkeys do not laugh. Laughter is particular to men.

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