Friday, October 21, 2011

Personality Cycles

Is it just me, or does everybody have personality cycles? Or maybe you could call them magnetism cycles? Charisma cycles? Whatever you would call it, there's no doubt in my mind that I have such cycles. I can be the life of the party one day and fizzle out the next.

I have days when just about everybody smiles and greets me. No matter whether young, elderly, male, female, black or white. On other days folks will frown or ignore me. On the good days I can wait at the service counter at Kmart, Lowe's, or Home Depot and clerks will rush to wait on me with a smile. If they're waiting on someone else, they will smile and say, "Be with you shortly, Sir."

On bad days I will be completely invisible to clerks. I can stand there for fifteen minutes and someone else will walk up and get immediate attention. I thought it might be the way I dress on a given day, but after a bit of experimenting, it didn't seem to matter how I was dressed.

The only exception to this seems to be kids and dogs. Kids, mostly preschoolers, almost always smile and wave. Of course I guess kids are nice to everyone. And I seem to have a way with dogs, although I'm no whisperer like Cesar.

One day I was returning an item to Lowe's. I waited and watched as several other customers who arrived after me got waited on. Sometimes I would raise my hand, "I've been standing here..." But I was unseen and unheard. Finally a young man comes up and a clerk rushed to help him. The young gentleman pointed at me and said,"He was here first." The clerk looked at me as if I had just materialized. I thanked the young man, and said to the clerk, "Sorry, guess I was invisible for a while."

No comments: