I once read an article about the "trend" of elderly people being called, honey, dear, sweetheart, etc by younger people. I think a store checkout is a very common place to hear stuff like that. A lot of times when I'm out doing creel for work, I run into elderly people who are very friendly and I'm the one that gets called dear or honey. That doesn't bother me too much because some of them probably have grandkids not much younger than me. However, the other day, I was in a store, with my work uniform on, with Scott!, and I got called sweetheart TWICE by the gal behind the counter. She was probably no more than 10 years older than me. I don't know why it aggravated me so much, but I walked away wishing I had told her off - I'm not your honey, so don't call me that! If I can't stand it, I can understand how offensive it would be to the elderly.
The other day I was in the grocery store checkout and waiting in line behind one person. The clerk and customer were carrying on a conversation, but the clerk wasn't doing a very good job of multitasking. She was using the grocery item in her hand as a prop for her gestures. I kept my cool and told myself to be patient. They finished up and she started doing my groceries. She saw another gal walking by that worked there and called her over and proceeded to have a conversation with her, using my groceries as her props. I had had enough and asked if they could please have the conversation another time so that I could get out of there. The other lady nodded her head and walked away. The clerk was noticeably annoyed at me and suddenly couldn't run my groceries through fast enough. That time I walked away feeling like Meg Ryan in You've Got Mail when she finally says what she wants to say the moment she means to say it, but remorse inevitably follows....grrr.
