ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

After struggling and fretting until late last night over how impossible my homework was, I was not in the greatest mood when I went to work today. My first customer asked me in a whiny voice, “Why can’t I just pay only the interest on my payday loan?”

I usually explain nicely that it’s not legal in Kansas and that the fines for breaking that law are severe, but she asks this every time she comes in, and today I felt irrationally irritated that people can’t remember the answer they got two weeks ago.  So all I said was “Because it’s against the law,” in a tone that brooked no argument.

She opened her mouth again, presumably to object, and then took a second look at me and apparently changed her mind. Then she asked, “You only go up to a hundred for your loans, right?”

“That’s correct, our biggest loan is $100,” I agreed.

“But what about doing a loan over a hundred?” she asked, apparently serious.

I felt like saying, “Is this some kind of joke?” but instead I just repeated what I’d said before, in an even flatter tone. Later one of my other customers told me that the practice of taking customer information like phone numbers, and home address is “pretty damn ignernt’ if you asked him. Well, I didn’t.

One of my customers asked me if I’d like to go to dinner with him, today. Earlier he’d noticed the ring I was wearing and asked in surprise whether I’d gotten engaged. I told him no, it was a bogus one that I’d started wearing to fend off customers who make passes at me. We had a chuckle and I didn’t think much of it at the time, but later he turned back up and said, “Would it count as making a pass at you if I asked you to dinner with me?” I felt bad for him but obviously I had to say no. I wouldn’t probably have accepted even if I didn’t already have a boyfriend, because he is over twenty years older than me, but I still felt bad for him. He’s one of my favorite customers, and he’s a really nice person. I felt sad thinking that he might be lonely.  It made my bad mood disappear almost right away.  Maybe I shouldn’t pout so much about my situation when other people might feel worse than me.