Auntie Kate The Resale Expert

“It’s all about me.” I thought that was a phrase mocking the self-absorbed world view of preadolescent, or arrested-development, people.

But apparently it’s infectious. More and more people think that the world must be arranged to their particular liking, and if the existence of YOU is not in their playbook of MY LIFE AS I WANT IT TO BE, why, you are no more deserving of respect than…well, than what? Litter? mosquitoes?

Take for example the “best customer” who wants to redeem a coupon that says “not valid on previously-marked-down goods” on, of course, previously-marked-down goods. She’s got a 20%-off coupon and thinks that because she’s your “best customer” you should give her an additional $2 off that $40 skirt which is marked down to $10 already…thus enabling her to buy it for $8, which would be a loss for her “favorite shop.”

How someone thinks she’s your best customer by demanding more than you have agreed to give is beyond me.

Or folks who cut you off in traffic. “You’d better let me squeeze in front of you from from the right lane even though that lane has been clearly marked right turn only for the last block because I’m more important than you.” ( Actually I always let these folks in. For one thing, I am thinking with my evil grin Go right ahead, I myself am important enough that the people I am meeting will WAIT for ME … and for another thing: do I really want this self-important, impatient, and probably-on-the-phone driver beHIND me?)

I have a neighbor who complains that I allow my palm trees to grow in their natural shape, rather than chopping fronds off until the trees look like swizzle sticks. Besides this being really bad for the trees and downright silly-looking, what’s it to her? Well, it’s all about her. She doesn’t understand where her skin (or real estate!) ends and someone else’s begins.

These are the same types of people who complain to the park ranger that the family at the next picnic shelter is cooking something really pungent. Or that fetch mall security because there’s a child being a child (that is, noisy) right where they want to make a phone call.

And to top it all off, these “all about me” folks expect it to just happen. A shopkeeper to stay in business when that “best customer” allows her no profit whatsoever. A driver who expects the road to provide her with a car-length of empty asphalt. A neighbor who expects me to butcher perfectly-healthy trees.

I mean, I could even grudgingly respect the person who wants to create her OWN perfect life…. if she did it under her own power. But to demand that the universe (which includes me) rearrange itself to suit her perfect life? What an idiot. Get outta MY life. And outta my trees.