Worthless Words.

I’ve mentioned here before that I dislike being accosted with a ‘hello’ when I walk through the door of a shop. I’m a private sort of person, and I know that the greeting is being made only to serve the diktat of policy, not out of any genuine interest in me or my presence. It’s disingenuous, and I dislike all forms of falseness. The only reason I don’t reply with: ‘Excuse me, do I know you?’ is because it would be churlish in the extreme to discomfit somebody when they’re only doing as they’ve been instructed by a vacuous management.

What I dislike even more, however, is having ‘thank you’ called out to me when I leave empty handed. Thank you for what? I didn’t go into the shop to grace the establishment with my esteemed presence. I went in looking for something I wanted – preferably at the lowest price – and since I didn’t find it, I’m now leaving again. What is there to thank me for? Politeness has its place, but in this case it’s just pointless pandering to contrived form. There’s no worth in that.

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By contrast, I watched a film tonight in which Dylan Thomas (who used words rather well) put the skids under the stuffed shirts and puerile academics of Yale University by reciting bawdy Limericks to them. Seems there can be a lot of worth in bawdy Limericks.