92615_RAA_LooseCannon_Text_R1_PROOF

the company line to follow me around to make sure I don't steal anything, so we can make fun of you while we walk right over there, Wayne, to pick up this paper and come back and put it on our account."

"Just give me your bag. If you go into any store in San Francisco, they're gonna ask you for your bag."

"Maybe," says I, "but at this point, most people give up, Wayne. If I take off this backpack, and give it to you, and you give me a little ticket to prove it's mine, which, if it stayed on my back, I note, there would be no doubt of whose it is, and I take my little ticket, and walk over to that paper, and come back, and give you my ticket, and you get my backpack, which has been sitting there, for, what? Two seconds, and then I put our stuff on account, and then I have to put my backpack back on, and then I leave. And then I go home and write a letter to the president of Arvey's about how you, Wayne, made my shopping experience extremely inconvenient. And then I post it on the Internet, or publish it in some other form, God forbid, and a whole bunch of people laugh at you, you poor bastard, having to deal with me." And then, I gave my backpack to Wayne, and he gave me a little ticket to prove it's mine, and I took my little ticket, and walked over to that paper, and went back to the cash register, and gave some other sniggering flunky my ticket, and he got my backpack, which had been sitting there, for, like, 35 seconds. In the time this took, some woman comes out of nowhere and loads up a big cart full of office supplies and gets ahead of me in the line of the only cash register open. She starts to explain how some stuff is for resale, so she's not going to pay taxes on that, but the other stuff is OK, and she'll pay the sales tax on this, blah, blah, blah. I say to her, "Lady, just tell them it's all for resale, and you won't have to pay for any of the tax." "Give me your bag, sir." So I do.

"But," she says, "that would be dishonest."

"They think you're stealing all of this stuff anyway," I say, to make the cashier laugh, who had overheard Wayne and me.

"Wayne," the cashier says, with a little to much relish, leaning into a store wide P.A. system, "can you open another register, please?"

So, now, poor Wayne comes back, and I'm not kidding this is maybe a

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