Thirty Memories for Thirty Years. The Beginning.

Friends are a gift. Every one of them in different ways. My first real friend outside of my family was a girl named Marie who I met on the first day of school (named changed for her privacy). I've talked about her quite a bit because she's a big part of my life. This year we celebrated 30 years of friendship. It's a pretty big deal for us. we've been counting years and dates for a long time.

We went on a road trip together to celebrate, and it was pretty epic. It started out with a stop at AutoZone to buy wipers. And if you've ever been to AutoZone, you'll know what I mean when I tried to warn her that it wouldn't be a short stop.
There were six guys working in the store that day. Six. There was one customer at the counter, and then us. We grabbed the wiper blades and stepped up to a register with a guy sitting behind it. A large, silent sort. The guy sat there for a minute, then got up without a word and walked away. Cool. We got in the other line. That guy was helping someone find a part. After about four minutes of us standing there, he got up from his stool and said, "I'll be with you in a minute, ladies." Then he hobbled toward the back of the store. I say hobbled because he only had one leg. I'm not kidding. Slowest part retrieval EVER.
Meanwhile, the first guy who had been sitting at the other register was just doing a lap around the warehouse part of the store. He did not pick up anything. He did not serve another customer. He just... walked.
There was another guy on the phone off to the other side. He stayed on the phone for a bit, but then he went out onto the floor of the store and... aimlessly wandered.
We also noticed the one guy mopping the floor. Which was a fairly hopeless cause at that point with fresh snow that people were continually tracking through.
Another couple got in line behind us.
One-leg returned with the ordered part and began the slow process of checking the guy in front of us out. The phone rang in between and he had to answer it since there was no one else available. Since the Silent One was still making his round through the warehouse.
The guy in line behind us let out a stream of profanities, absolutely pissed that he'd been waiting for three minutes. It had been more than ten for us by then, standing there with two wiper blades.
THEN, the the guy who was wandering the floor of the store moved a display three inches, then went to open the register we'd originally been at. As he beckoned for us, the Silent One finished his lap and plopped himself down on the third register (that's right, there are THREE REGISTERS in this store) and waved to the customers behind us. I couldn't help it. At that point, I muttered, "Or you could have just done that in the first place when we were STANDING THERE waiting for you." Our cashier chuckled and said, "Yeah." like he knew that guy never did any work.
Five seconds later, we'd checked out of the store, stepping over the fresh mopping which was already becoming muddy.
There were two workers who had been in and out of the store, now outside, cleaning out mop buckets. I guess they didn't actually work for the store?
Marie and I just looked at each other and kind of laughed. Was it a bad omen? Maybe. But nevertheless, we got on with our trip.
We stopped for food on the way out of town. Taco Bell is notoriously slow, but what made this particular one slower, was when we drove up to the pay window, the guy standing there didn't seem prepared to handle cash. I gave him twenty dollars and he said, "Let me go get some change."
He actually meant GO GET change. Like walked across the back line to the cash register in the front to grab the change. Then return with the change. Then pass out the food.
We laughed together as we drove out of town, a good solid 30 minutes after first leaving. I'm happy to report that those two incidences were the worst part of the trip. And they were actually funny because we didn't happen to be in any hurry. But all the same, we did leave town wondering if we'd just signed up for some kind of comedy of errors in the making.