Finding myself with some time to kill I end up at a local sports bar for quick beer. It’s always interesting to go into an unfamiliar place to check out the décor and the regular customers. At some places the most décor you will find is in the regular customers.
I like to see just how many big screen televisions can be packed into the limited space which is usually cluttered with a barrage of interesting team memorabilia.
Perched at the bar I cannot help but over-hear the conversation of the people a few seats down from me without even trying. They seem to enjoy hearing the sound of their own voices and want people to know what their conversation is about. Or the alcohol has somehow dampened their hearing and just need to talk loud. This type of patrons have been known to stumble across the solving of the entire world’s problems if they happen to drink enough. This being in the late afternoon it appears they are still a few drinks away from solving anything.
Talk regarding work issues and co-workers takes a second place only to the topic of sports, and that is dependent on whether there was a game on recently. The usual ramblings of good days, bad days, hate my job, the boss is such an asshole and what do you guys think of the new guy? Or the ever favourite gossip floating around the “did you hear?” mill.
One such topic of their conversation referred to a particular person at their place of employment. Sorry but I didn’t catch the information about what they did for a living. It must have happened before I got there.
They began on the topic of lunches and how stingy this person was every time it came time to pay the bill. Apparently the only time this so-called miser of a person didn’t seem to care about money was when it wasn’t his own. This continued in comments that went back and forth between them for the next number of minutes to the point of me tuning them out again.
Not long after, and nearing the end of my beer, I overheard them ask for their bill and were preparing themselves to leave. When the bartender handed them the bill they both began to dicker with each other over how much they each owed individually, who actually had which items and how much they truly were required to pay right down to the penny. This was followed by each of them having their own complete rendition of the before and after tax mathematics explanation. And there was an explanation complete with them correcting each other’s percentages.
I could not help but reflect on their prior topic of conversation and chuckle quietly to myself. Just how stingy did this other co-worker of theirs have to be to stand out so vividly to these two number crunchers?
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