A Visit That Would Never End

I’m already used to people who come into the store just to talk. They walk around, look at things, ask questions - not because they need something, but because they’re bored at home. But today was a special case. A real champion of talking.

An old man comes in, quite energetic. He says he’s interested in a small but powerful oven, and right away, without waiting for an answer, he sits down. Then everything goes as usual. He asks questions and answers them himself. Why does he need an oven? Because he likes to bake. What exactly does he bake? Pies, buns, withh filling and without. What kind of filling? Anything: cabbage, potatoes, mushrooms, meat... I don’t even have time to open my mouth, and he’s already moved on to the dough recipe: eggs, water, oil, flour. That’s it,the lecture has started.

Then it turns out that his oven is “on its last legs”,so he needs a new one. But that’s just an excuse, because then he startst talking about how he roasts meat, and immediately pulls out his phone to show photos. He scrolls, comments argues wiht himself: this is not it, this is not it, but this is Romanian-style meat, and this is something else. I’m standing there and realize that if I don’t do something now, I’ll be stuck here forever.

At some point I barely managed to stop him and said that I urgently need to unload some goods . Really urgently,they can’t do it without me. He says “Oh, that’s a pity. I’ll wait for you” . I tell him it will take a lng time, a very long time. And he calmly says, “That’s fine, and i’m not in a hurry”. And at that moment it became clear that this is a dead end.

So I had to use plan B. I told him there is another store nearby and there’s a guy named Constantine who works there, who also likes to bake, he just hides it from others. I said, go to him, you will definitely get along. The old man got excited, said he has plenty of time - he’s retired, everything is fine - and went to look for Constantine. Already at the exit he started a new story, but I pretended I had to rush off.

Honestly I have not been this happy to see someone leave in a long time. It was especialy nice because it was a small revenge. Last week this same Constantine sent me a former chief engineer from some Soviet factory ,who spent an hour talking about how they used to make TV tubes. Now the score is even, 1:1.

• Image by chatgpt.