Alt text: a text post that reads: Work in retail long enough, and you'll eventually realize the rules for dealing with Customers are exactly the same as dealing with the Fae:
- Avoid eye contact.
- Never reveal your full name.
- Accept nothing They offer you.
- Never verbally agree or disagree with anything They might happen to say.
- To apologize is to acknowledge a debt owed.
- Under no circumstances are you ever to thank Them.
- Remember that They are incapable of reading signs in human languages.
Me too. God bless the Appalachian mountains.
I’ve probably met more mouth breathing, lead paint eating morons (myself included. As a matter of fact, at one time I was a t-1000 Liquid Metal mercury from 50 thermometers in my hand moron) than most people will ever encounter in 10 lifetimes. I can count on one hand just how many of those people were truly bad people.
If I have a visibly heavy load at work, it can be annoying how many people wander up and say, “hey ‘ere buddy. Yew gawn need inny hep wittat? I’ze just checkin’.”
Open the hood of your car and you can summon an entire neighborhood. For real, need directions in the Appalachians, just stop somewhere with houses, open your hood and spend a few minutes staring at your engine.
It's important to note that "the Appalachian mountains" span thousands of miles / kilometers across the United States and Canada and there aren't many generalizations that hold up for folks across that entire span. That may not be clear to a lot of folks, especially those not familiar with the eastern USA.
Of the parts I'm familiar with, mostly the southern parts, I would say that advice probably works best if you already fit in enough that you might appear to be "one of them" versus if you are visibly a minority, particularly if you stop some place outside the more liberal towns and cities. I can tell you for sure that many peoples' demeanor changes for the worse if/once they find out or assume you are gay and there are parts where you will find yard and road signs that specifically are anti-lgbt.
Granted, I'm not trying to paint the whole population of that 2,000+ mile swath of land as all being rabid bigots and racists either, just that for people reading that advice, I would say "your mileage my vary."