People Are Stupid and My Job is an Idiot.

I used to hope that the cliche of American Tourist as Big Fat Obnoxious Inconsiderate Oaf With A Video Camera was not (in general) true. I know that that was a ridiculous, naive thing to hope for because we all know that it IS true, but you know what? It is REALLY REALLY PAINFULLY true. Even when they’re touring their own country.

Things most people know to be true: (1) customer service is THE WORST, (2) New Yorkers are in a bad mood ALL THE TIME.

So, you know what’s funny, Pushy-Overweight-Midwestern-Tourist-With-A-Video-Camera? Not that you asked me a bunch of questions that could be better and more efficiently answered by turning your head slightly and training your eyes on the symbols constructed into words on the sign in front of your face there. No, unfortunately this is a regular occurrence that I have gotten somewhat used to. It’s that after this, you began to adjust your video camera while explaining to me in a booming, Wisconsin-accented voice (nothing against Wisconsin, I hear it’s lovely), that it’s your daughter’s 21st Birthday and, after lifting the camera and pointing it in my face, demanded “Say Happy Birthday”.

Now this is the part where it’s my fault, because I said it. I said it with a big “fuck-you” on my face, but I did say it, and for this I am sorry and a little bit ashamed. I hoped it would get you out of my face quicker, POMTWAVC, but as we learned before, my tourist-related hopes are naive idiots that are incapable of accepting reality.

I guess my “Happy Birthday” was not to your liking, and I guess you thought I was happy to play along (I guess you think pissed looks like content) because why else (WHY ELSE) would you keep the camera on me and bark “Again”!

Is this the Birthday present you want for you 21 year old daughter? The reluctant, surly words of a random struggling artist from behind a pane of bullet-proof glass at a museum of dissected dead people? I don’t think you know your daughter very well.

POMTWAVC, I know you are in New York City and you think that NYC is like Disney Universal Studios at Epcot World, but Ground Zero is not Space Mountain and I am not your Jungle Book Safari Tour Guide. You can’t point your camera at me and expect me to smile my empty Disney smile and recreate 9/11 or whatever. You fail at Birthday presents and you fail at human interaction. Yay!

Tags: tourists