It's like a Katy Perry song that you desperately wish would stop showing up on the radio, so you change the station and then a Ke$ha song comes on, and so you turn the dial higher and, low and behold, it's Nicki Minaj. My point is that I'm in a rotating Hell all too familiar to customer service representatives: the inevitable weather conversation. And not just fun water cooler chat that we're all just dying to dive into; no, I'm talking about the kind of conversation with friends or strangers that involves vague analysis of years past, combined with future predictions involving the week's activities, and small-term goals that one wishes to accomplish. I'm talking about a large group of people who can hold 20-minute conversations about snow accumulation affecting grocery shopping routes, people who routinely watch the weather forecast at the allotted 5-minute intervals on their television screens, and people who become instant experts on wall cloud formations on any given news channel's website weather forums.
"I can't watch, this is too nerve-wracking. Just tell me when it starts raining."Yeah, I'm talking about those weather talk assholes.
I'll break it down for you: I have worked in customer service for about 8 years now. I also grew up in the Midwest, in a small farm town outside of Omaha, where the weather is the conversation in any given business on any given day. I worked for 3 years at a gas station where 9 out of 10 customers would shove their cases of beer and Mountain Dews up onto the countertop and ask for Skoal, simultaneously pointing at the gas pump where their car was parked and at the sky commenting on how the current weather was affecting their pocketbooks. For the most part I would smile and nod, give them their change, and bid them farewell. To engage any further was to put myself in danger of a fanatical lingerer, someone willing to put all prior errands aside just to tell me how the weather forecast was not cooperating with his dumb kid's baseball schedule.
I sit in an office where I constantly hear others around me shouting out to one another what the forecast looks like over the next week.Working in a small town, you might conclude that I had many farmers also spewing their woes regarding the forecast. However, I found out that farmers don't really talk all that much about the weather. Sure, they may comment about wishing for a good season that isn't too rainy or too dry, but that's about it. My only rational conclusion for such lack of opinion on a topic that everybody had a hearty opinion about, was that farmers were too busy fucking farming to bother talking about something that doesn't really matter.
Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the weather may have mattered slightly, like when we had to migrate with our food in order to eat. Or predict the apocalypse. But, nowadays, the only important factors any weather forecast segment seems to have are to predict the big football game, to implant fear into our minds regarding our holiday barbeque schedule, and to educate the masses on bromances.
I haven't watched a weather segment in years, and it's not for lack of a television due to my poor financial standings. If I wanted to know the weather, I'd look outside and not instigate a shouting match with the lunatic whose Facebook status indicates that he hates that ladybugs are already inhabiting his back porch. The only thing I may slightly hate more than weather enthusiasts are people who believe superior driving skills reside in certain states. I sit in an office where I constantly hear others around me shouting out to one another what the forecast looks like over the next week. I can't seem to understand any of it. Are they informing one another so that they may now dress accordingly? Why is the shouting necessary? To indicate urgency? It's like I'm stuck in the movie Twister and Bill Paxton won't shut the hell up about The Fujita Scale.
"Seriously, dude, I get it. It's raining. You're hurting my arms, Bill."
The weather, I'm assuming, used to be a topic you'd bring up with someone when you didn't really want to talk to them. It's like asking a guy what his major is: I don't really care, you know I don't care, but it's an important step towards seeing you naked later. Now, whenever the conversation has actually steered toward the weather on a date, I realize I've entered the gates of Hell as boy wonder across from me details a week of rain that derailed his beach vacation. And there's no escaping them, these enthusiasts. The day after tomorrow could be happening tomorrow and some asshole will comment on how some weatherman got it wrong and how he's pissed grocery day is now ruined.