a paradigm of public offensiveness

A couple of days ago I popped in to Whitcoulls bookstore. All I need was to grab some glue, and I knew exactly where it was, so we’re talking a 2 minute trip at the most. During this mere 2 minutes, my intellectual, visual and olfactory senses were all assaulted:

1. open entering the store I am greeted by a middle aged man with his finger buried knuckle-deep in his nose, going for serious gold
2. someone had dropped a heinous smell by the self-help-book section
3. a young man was asking for help finding a biography of Che Guevara (first fail: get off the pop culture band wagon), but the sales assistant had never heard of him (second fail: get some general knowledge). Unfortunately neither of them knew how to spell “Che Guevara” so they had some trouble finding any titles (third fail).

That was more than enough for me, and I was out of there.